Measuring Availability in the Domain Name System

The domain name system (DNS) is critical to Internet functionality. The availability of a domain name refers to its ability to be resolved correctly. We develop a model for server dependencies that is used as a basis for measuring availability. We introduce the minimum number of servers queried (MSQ) and redundancy as availability metrics and show how common DNS misconfigurations impact the availability of domain names. We apply the availability model to domain names from production DNS and observe that 6.7% of names exhibit sub-optimal MSQ, and 14% experience false redundancy. The MSQ and redundancy values can be optimized by proper maintenance of delegation records for zones.

[1]  Srinivasan Seshan,et al.  Availability, usage, and deployment characteristics of the domain name system , 2004, IMC '04.

[2]  Craig A. Shue,et al.  Understanding implications of DNS zone provisioning , 2008, IMC '08.

[3]  Ellen W. Zegura,et al.  Diversity in DNS performance measures , 2002, IMW '02.

[4]  Daniel Massey,et al.  Impact of configuration errors on DNS robustness , 2004, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[5]  Emin Gün Sirer,et al.  Perils of transitive trust in the domain name system , 2005, IMC '05.

[6]  Prasant Mohapatra,et al.  Quality of name resolution in the Domain Name System , 2009, 2009 17th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols.