[dns-operations] Should medium-sized companies run their own recursive resolver?

[Carlos M. Martinez]

Agreed. However, at least in my experience, it is usually easy to
achieve high availability figures running a linux box on relatively
cheap hardware, while links are much less dependable. I've seen 400-day
plus uptimes on very cheap, dubious looking, PC clones.

Now that I think of it, rather than the recursive DNS function, the
local resolution of local resources is, IMO, a more important driver for
running your local DNS. If you cater for a 100 person office, you
probably have some printers, maybe a file server or two, some form of
backup servicea, VoIP telephone service and maybe a local intranet/wiki.
Hard-coding IPs for all these services in 100 workstations seems crazy
to me.

The, if you run a DNS for local services, also configuring it for
recursion should be straightforward.

regards,

~Carlos


On 10/14/13 4:09 PM, Wiley, Glen wrote:
> While the concern about the link to the outside world is an issue, the
> same concern holds for whatever provides your connectivity.  As a matter
> of practice, when designing for availability you want to focus on the
> least reliable layers in a stack before focusing on other layers,
> otherwise your availability improvements are potentially nil.
>
> If you can run a more reliable recursive server than your provider (or
> google or whoever) then by all means, however there are probably more
> meaningful places to spend your resources if you have a small company.
>
> On the other hand, if there is a functional reason for running your own
> recursive server that is entirely different, for example filtering via
> DNS, split view zones etc.