Dns

These days Open DNS resolvers are getting quite popular. With Open DNS resolver I mean resolvers including OpenDNS as well as Google Public DNS.

One of major issues these resolvers suffer is failure of integration with CDN providers like Akamai, Limelight etc. In this post I will analyse sample client site of Akamai - Malaysia Airlines website - http://www.malaysiaairlines.com.  

Looking at OpenDNS, Google Public DNS and my ISP (BSNL’s) DNS resolver for its DNS records:

It has been an interesting week at village - dry weather, (ultra) dry classes, (boring) external seminars and more of depressing environment but one can always find some hope out of such depressing environment. Overall life here is colourful but one just needs to lookout for colours. :)   One interesting case to report today - F root server has quite bad connectivity in India. Last week a friend asked me for traceroutes to all root servers and here’s what I saw when I did traceroute for F root from BSNL connection:

In last few days, I have been pushing discussion on APNIC & NANOG mailing lists about poor DNS infrastructure in India.

Thought to put a quick blog post on the issue.

So what’s exactly wrong?

To understand what’s wrong, let’s understand how DNS works at core level. DNS relies on a hierarchy model with . (dot) on top which is Root and TLD i.e Top Level Domains below Root, which further  follow 2nd level domains which are popularly domain names we use. So e.g mail.google.com is actually like

Yesterday I called MTS Data Card support but their IVRS system was failing in giving me my balance details. Eventually I decided to email their support and glad to say support email was also easily available on their website.

Today I saw acknowledgement mail in spam. No big deal but I usually dig around genuine mails which go in spam to find exact cause. In this case I found mail was sent to me from  customercare.del@mtsindia.in and the server which relayed this mail was:

DNS Lesson time!

Today, I was just looking into website - ideaisp.net

This site is overall pretty interesting as it’s showing various upstream links of IDEA Cellular ISP backbone. Seems like they are just using Cable & Wireless for most of International bandwidth although IDEA ISP is not functional yet. Anyways, this post is not about their geeky upstream peers & routing tables but how bad one can setup DNS! :)