[79518] in North American Network Operators' Group

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Re: djbdns: An alternative to BIND

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Atkins)
Sat Apr 9 02:21:17 2005

Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 23:22:53 -0700
From: Steve Atkins <steve@blighty.com>
To: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <42570BD3.9040401@socal.rr.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu


On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 03:55:15PM -0700, Vicky Rode wrote:

> Just wondering how many have transitioned to djbdns from bind and if so
> any feedback.

djbdns has lower performance, both as an authoritative and recursive
resolver, than bind.

It's less flexible than bind9. But it's data files and log files are
easier to machine generate / parse.

dnscache seems marginally less prone to bloating memory usage than
bind. I've not compared it with recent binds.

tinydns isn't blindingly fast, but it doesn't nap while new zones are
loaded. With a decent DNS architecture that needn't be a problem with
bind, but it does need more hardware to work around.

I still wouldn't suggest tinydns for anything other than a small,
low-traffic requirement.

I quite like dnscache, and would consider it as one option for
recursive resolution (but if you're doing authoritative using bind
then you have bind clue onsite, and one of the stronger reasons for
using dnscache over bind goes away). In some unusual cases dnscache
can return data that is incorrect, but it's doing so as documented
and it's seldom a problem in practice.

djbdns has appallingly bad and often misleading, but entirely accurate
documentation.  Bind does not.

The only unequivocally bad thing about the djbdns suite is the lack of
technical and social savvy in some of it's more vocal proponents.

I use both tinydns and dnscache, but I recommend bind to clients
I consult for.

Cheers,
  Steve


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