[dns-operations] Prevalence of nameserver software Was: Re: DNS Operations

[Fred Morris]

Speaking to the message not the (ChetGPT) "massage"...

On Sun, 3 Mar 2024, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:
> [...]
> I define most popular as the largest number of DNS server installed throughout the whole world.

I think this is a valid point. DNS is not synonymous with the Internet; 
neither is operations.

Internal DNS servers exist, and with guidance concerning the need for 
network segmentation there should be a lot more of them. I have had 
several requests and inquiries over the past few years specifically 
concerning a desire to log the addresses of clients making requests.

These requests persistently refuse to accept that DNS is an application 
level protocol, and that a request (or response) is recast by every 
nameserver it passes through even if it is merely "forwarding": "there 
must be a way!" People go to great lengths, there's a lot of language 
lawyering and playing with EDNS involved in these attempts.

Invariably my answer (for all but the most technical questions) is install 
a real DNS server with visibility inside of the NAT horizon (if there is 
one; there usually is), and that the general-purpose "logging" solution is 
Dnstap.

My admittedly cynical response to the question posed here is that the most 
common server software is probably a lightweight forwarder (e.g. dnsmasq) 
or something which only coincidentally does DNS (e.g. Active Directory).

--

Fred Morris, internet plumber