UNDERSTANDING DNS TRAFFIC

The Domain Name System is a critical component of today's Internet. It is the starting point for most of the traffic exchanges that take place, including email and surfing the Web.

The Measurement Factory provides tools and research to help network operators understand their DNS traffic, and to help developers ensure their applications follow the protocol specifications. Our research and tools focus on question such as:

• What can we do to ensure that the DNS continues to grow and expand without suffering from performance issues?
• How can we make critical DNS servers (roots, TLDs) resilient to attacks?
• Why are there so many queries sent to the roots?
• How can we encourage people to fix configuration problems when the DNS seems to work fine anyway?
• Is DNSSEC going to make the DNS better, or is it too complicated and likely to introduce even more errors?

The Measurement Factory works closely with CAIDA, WIDE, and DNS-OARC on DNS-related projects.