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DNS Complexity: Although it contains just a few simple rules, DNS has grown into an enormously complex system.

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Paul VixieAuthors Info & Claims

Queue, Volume 5, Issue 3

Pages 24 - 29

https://doi.org/10.1145/1242489.1242499

Published: 01 April 2007 Publication History

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Abstract

DNS is a distributed, coherent, reliable, autonomous, hierarchical database, the first and only one of its kind. Created in the 1980s when the Internet was still young but overrunning its original system for translating host names into IP addresses, DNS is one of the foundation technologies that made the worldwide Internet possible. Yet this did not all happen smoothly, and DNS technology has been periodically refreshed and refined. Though it’s still possible to describe DNS in simple terms, the underlying details are by now quite sublime. This article explores the supposed and true definitions of DNS and shows some of the tension between these two definitions through the lens of the Internet protocol development philosophy.

References

[1]

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[2]

Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., Esibov, L. 2000. A DNS RR for specifying the location of services. IETF; http://www. ietf.org/rfc/rfc2782.txt.

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Vixie, P. 1996. A mechanism for prompt notification of zone changes. IETF; http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1996.txt.

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Vixie, P., et al. 1997. Dynamic updates in the domain name system. IETF; http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2136.txt.

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Cited By

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Foremski PGasser OMoura G(2019)DNS ObservatoryProceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3355369.3355566(87-100)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3355369.3355566
Chiba DAkiyama MYagi THato KMori TGoto S(2018)DomainChromaComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2018.03.01377:C(138-161)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2018.03.013
Ruohonen JLeppänen V(2016)On the Design of a Simple Network Resolver for DNS MiningProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies 201610.1145/2983468.2983513(105-112)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2983468.2983513
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Index Terms

DNS Complexity: Although it contains just a few simple rules, DNS has grown into an enormously complex system.
1. Networks
  1. Network properties
    1. Network range
      1. Local area networks
      2. Wide area networks
  2. Network protocols
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Communications management

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Published In

Queue Volume 5, Issue 3

DNS

April 2007

39 pages

ISSN:1542-7730

EISSN:1542-7749

DOI:10.1145/1242489

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 April 2007

Published in QUEUE Volume 5, Issue 3

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Cited By

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Foremski PGasser OMoura G(2019)DNS ObservatoryProceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3355369.3355566(87-100)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3355369.3355566
Chiba DAkiyama MYagi THato KMori TGoto S(2018)DomainChromaComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2018.03.01377:C(138-161)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2018.03.013
Ruohonen JLeppänen V(2016)On the Design of a Simple Network Resolver for DNS MiningProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies 201610.1145/2983468.2983513(105-112)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2983468.2983513
Lever CWalls RNadji YDagon DMcDaniel PAntonakakis M(2016)Domain-Z: 28 Registrations Later Measuring the Exploitation of Residual Trust in Domains2016 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP.2016.47(691-706)Online publication date: May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP.2016.47
Xuebiao Yuchi Xiaodong Lee Lanlan Pan (2016)Dealing with temporary domain name issues in the DNS2016 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication (ISCC)10.1109/ISCC.2016.7543831(778-783)Online publication date: Jun-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCC.2016.7543831
Vixie PAhn GSander T(2014)Why Collaborate?Proceedings of the 2014 ACM Workshop on Information Sharing & Collaborative Security10.1145/2663876.2663877(1-1)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2663876.2663877
Streibelt FBöttger JChatzis NSmaragdakis GFeldmann APapagiannaki KGummadi KPartridge C(2013)Exploring EDNS-client-subnet adopters in your free timeProceedings of the 2013 conference on Internet measurement conference10.1145/2504730.2504767(305-312)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2504730.2504767
Afonso JVeiga P(2012)Improving DNS Security Using Active Firewalling with Network ProbesInternational Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks10.1155/2012/6841808:5(684180)Online publication date: 23-May-2012
https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/684180
Jiankang Yao Wei Mao (2012)A method for DNS names identical resolution7th International Conference on Communications and Networking in China10.1109/ChinaCom.2012.6417443(30-34)Online publication date: Aug-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/ChinaCom.2012.6417443
Zhang BWu JSong XLiu JWang L(2011)Virtualization Technology Based DNS Service ClusterProceedings of the 2011 Second International Conference on Networking and Distributed Computing10.1109/ICNDC.2011.57(249-253)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICNDC.2011.57
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Recommendations

DNS Observatory: The Big Picture of the DNS

Comparing DNS resolvers in the wild

Securing DNS: Extending DNS Servers with a DNSSEC Validator

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