This is a fast, full-featured, authoritative DNS server. It can handle over one million queries-per-second per CPU core. It is designed to be exposed to the Internet, where even servers that have light loads of only 100,000 queries-per-second may nonetheless be attacked with millions of queries-per-second.

Currently, it is in "prototype" stage. Most of the major functionality is supported, but it still needs more unit tests written.

Just type make to build the software. This works on Windows (MinGW) and Mac, too, although you may optionally use the VS10 and XCode projects instead.

The easiest way to test the server is to run on the comman-line with one or more DNS zone-files, like so:

# robdns example.zone

This will start listening on the any IP address (v4 and v6) on port 53. Zone-files are in the standard format, with a filename ending in .zone, and starting with an SOA record.

To test that it's running, you can use the normal dig command.

$ dig chaos txt version.bind @localhost +short

You should get back the version string of robdns/1.

However, the above example is the slow way of running the software. The intended use is to bypass the kernel's network stack using special drivers like PF_RING. To run in this faster mode, install the drivers and run with a command like the following:

# robdns example.zone dna0 192.168.1.222

In this example, the server will use it's own user-mode TCP/IP stack instead. Currently, this benchmarks to about 1-million packets-per-second for each CPU core.

The following RR types have been implemented:

SOA, NS,
A, AAAA, PTR, CNAME,
SSHFP, LOC, TXT, SRV, SPF, HINFO, MX,
DNSKEY, NSEC, NSEC3, NSEC3PARAM, RRSIG, DS, TLSA,
EDNS0,

The following interfaces are supported: sockets, libpcap, PF_RING

This tool created by Robert Graham: email: [email protected] twitter: @ErrataRob