[162839] in North American Network Operators' Group
whoami.akamai.net [was: Google Public DNS Problems?]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick W. Gilmore)
Thu May 2 14:17:03 2013
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
In-Reply-To: <31BE8CEA-379B-4F8A-A3AB-586970EEF248@hopcount.ca>
Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 14:12:56 -0400
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On May 02, 2013, at 12:12 , Joe Abley <jabley@hopcount.ca> wrote:
> On 2013-05-02, at 12:10, Joe Abley <jabley@hopcount.ca> wrote:
>> On 2013-05-02, at 11:59, Charles Gucker <cgucker@onesc.net> wrote:
>>> That's not entirely true. You can easily do lookup for
>>> whoami.akamai.net and it will return the unicast address for the =
node
>>> in question (provided the local resolver is able to do the
>>> resolution). This is a frequent lookup that I do when I don't =
know
>>> what actual anycast node I'm using.
>>=20
>> Using 8.8.8.8 to tell me about whoami.akamai.net tells me what Akamai =
authoritative server Google last used to answer that query.
>=20
> Oh, now that I poke at it, it seems like whoami.akamai.net is telling =
me about the address of the resolver I used, rather than the address of =
the akamai node I hit.
>=20
> Never mind, I understand now :-)
For clarity: Looking up the hostname "whoami.akamai.net" will return the =
IP address in the source field of the packet (DNS query) which reached =
the authoritative name server for Akamai.net.
We use this to look for forwarding or proxying, which is frequently =
unknown / invisible to the end user.
It has the side-effect that querying against an anycast server (e.g. =
208.67.222.222 or 8.8.8.8) will show the unicast address of the anycast =
node which forwarded to our servers.
In case anyone is wondering, we do not do any special logging or =
watching of this hostname. It is logged for a short time on the local =
hard drive the same as any other DNS query, but unless someone actually =
looks, we will not notice if you query for it. So feel free to use it =
for your own purposes as much as you like. We have a bit of spare DNS =
capacity. :)
--=20
TTFN,
patrick
