ZDNS: A Fast DNS Toolkit for Internet Measurement

TL;DR

ZDNS is an open-source, high-performance DNS measurement toolkit designed to enhance large-scale Internet research by improving reproducibility, coverage, and operational insights into DNS systems.

Contribution

The paper introduces ZDNS, a modular and optimized DNS measurement framework that addresses limitations of existing tools in scalability and usability.

Findings

ZDNS achieves high measurement speed and accuracy.

Case studies demonstrate ZDNS's ability to reveal DNS operational complexities.

The toolkit enhances reproducibility in DNS research.

Abstract

Active DNS measurement is fundamental to understanding and improving the DNS ecosystem. However, the absence of an extensible, high-performance, and easy-to-use DNS toolkit has limited both the reproducibility and coverage of DNS research. In this paper, we introduce ZDNS, a modular and open-source active DNS measurement framework optimized for large-scale research studies of DNS on the public Internet. We describe ZDNS' architecture, evaluate its performance, and present two case studies that highlight how the tool can be used to shed light on the operational complexities of DNS. We hope that ZDNS will enable researchers to better -- and in a more reproducible manner -- understand Internet behavior.