Recursives in the Wild: Engineering Authoritative DNS Servers. Müller, M., Moura, G. C. M., de O. Schmidt, R., & Heidemann, J. Technical Report ISI-TR-720, USC/Information Sciences Institute, June, 2017.
Recursives in the Wild: Engineering Authoritative DNS Servers [link]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
In Internet Domain Name System (DNS), services operate \emphauthoritative name servers that individuals query through \emphrecursive resolvers. Operators strive to provide reliability by operating multiple name servers (NS), each on a separate IP address, and by using IP anycast to allow NSes to provide service from many physical locations. To meet their goals of minimizing latency and balancing load across NSes and anycast, operators need to know how recursive resolvers select an NS, and how that interacts with their NS deployments. Prior work has shown some recursives search for low latency, while others pick an NS at random or round robin, but did not examine how prevalent each choice was. This paper provides the first analysis of how recursives select between name servers in the wild, and from that we provide guidance to name server operators to reach their goals. We conclude that all NSes need to be equally strong and therefore we recommend to deploy IP anycast at every single authoritative.
@TechReport{Mueller17a,
        author =        {Moritz M\"{u}ller and Giovane C. M. Moura and
 Ricardo de O. Schmidt and John Heidemann},
 title = "Recursives in the Wild: Engineering Authoritative {DNS} Servers",
	institution = "USC/Information Sciences Institute",
	year = 		2017,
	sortdate = 		"2017-06-02", 
	project = "ant, lacrend, retrofuturebridge",
	jsubject = "routing",
	number =	"ISI-TR-720",
	month =		jun,
	jlocation =	"johnh: pafile",
	keywords =	"anycast, recursive DNS, authoritative selection",
	url =		"https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Mueller17a.html",
	pdfurl =	"https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Mueller17a.pdf",
	myorganization =	"USC/Information Sciences Institute",
	copyrightholder = "authors",
	abstract = "In Internet Domain Name System (DNS), services 
operate \emph{authoritative} name servers that individuals query 
through \emph{recursive resolvers}.  Operators strive to provide reliability
by operating multiple name servers (NS), each on a separate IP
address, and by using IP anycast to allow NSes to provide service from
many physical locations.  To meet their goals of minimizing latency
and balancing load across NSes and anycast, operators need to know how
recursive resolvers select an NS, and how that interacts with their NS
deployments.  Prior work has shown some recursives search for low
latency, while others pick an NS at random or round robin, but did not
examine how prevalent each choice was.  This paper provides the first
analysis of how recursives select between name servers in the wild,
and from that we provide guidance to name server operators to reach
their goals.  We conclude that all NSes need to be equally strong and
therefore we recommend to deploy IP anycast at every single
authoritative.",
}

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