DNS Diagnostics and Performance Measurement Tools
Ever been wondering if your ISP is hijacking your DNS traffic? Ever observed any misbehavior with your DNS responses? Ever been redirected to wrong address and suspected something is wrong with your DNS? Here we have a set of tools to perform basic audits on your DNS requests and responses to make sure your DNS is working as you expect.
You can measure the response time of any given DNS server for arbitrary requests
using dnsping. Just like traditional ping utility, it gives you similar
functionality for DNS requests.
You can also trace the path your DNS request takes to destination to make sure
it is not being redirected or hijacked. This can be done by comparing different
DNS queries being sent to the same DNS server using dnstraceroute and observe
if there is any difference between the path.
dnseval evaluates multiple DNS resolvers and helps you choose the best DNS
server for your network. While it is highly recommended to use your own DNS
resolver and never trust any third-party DNS server, but in case you need to
choose the best DNS forwarder for your network, dnseval lets you compare
different DNS servers from performance (latency) and reliability (loss) point
of view.
prerequisites
This script requires python3 as well as latest
dnspython and
cymruwhois. Please note that
"dnstraceroute" requires a modified version of dnspython module. All required
third-party modules are included as GIT submodules. You just need to run git submodule update --init and project directory to pull the required code.
installation
There are several ways that you can use this toolset. However using the sourcecode is always recommended.
From Source Code
- You can checkout this git repo and its submodules
git clone https://github.com/farrokhi/dnsdiag.git
cd dnsdiag
git submodule update --init
- You can alternatively install the package using pip:
pip3 install --process-dependency-links dnsdiag
From Binary
From time to time, binary version will be released for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms. You can grab the latest release from releases page.
dnsping
dnsping pings a DNS resolver by sending an arbitrary DNS query for given number of times:
% ./dnsping.py -c 3 -s 8.8.8.8 -t MX wikipedia.org
dnsping.py DNS: 8.8.8.8:53, hostname: wikipedia.org, rdatatype: MX
101 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=0 time=262.896 ms
101 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=1 time=305.608 ms
101 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=2 time=307.221 ms
--- 8.8.8.8 dnsping statistics ---
3 requests transmitted, 3 responses received, 0% lost
min=262.896 ms, avg=291.908 ms, max=307.221 ms, stddev=25.138 ms
This script calculates minimum, maximum and average response time as well as jitter (stddev)
dnstraceroute
dnstraceroute is a traceroute utility to figure out the path that your DNS request is passing through to get to its destination. You may want to compare it to your actual network traceroute and make sure your DNS traffic is not routed to any unwanted path.
% ./dnstraceroute.py --expert -s 8.8.4.4 yahoo.com
dnstraceroute.py DNS: 8.8.4.4:53, hostname: yahoo.com, rdatatype: A
1 204.109.58.53 (204.109.58.53) 1 ms
2 208.79.80.5 (208.79.80.5) 1 ms
3 162.223.13.177 (162.223.13.177) 1 ms
4 208.79.80.254 (208.79.80.254) 7 ms
5 eqixva-google-gige.google.com (206.126.236.21) 7 ms
6 209.85.242.142 (209.85.242.142) 7 ms
7 72.14.236.148 (72.14.236.148) 8 ms
8 209.85.250.70 (209.85.250.70) 16 ms
9 74.125.37.222 (74.125.37.222) 16 ms
10 *
11 google-public-dns-b.google.com (8.8.4.4) 15 ms
=== Expert Hints ===
[*] public DNS server is next to an invisible hop (probably a firewall)
Using --expert will instruct dnstraceroute to print expert hints (such as warnings of possible DNS traffic hijacking).
dnseval
dnseval is a bulk ping utility that sends an arbitrary DNS query to a give list of DNS servers. This script is meant for comparing response time of multiple DNS servers at once:
% ./dnseval.py -e -t AAAA -f public-v4.txt -c10 fg.weberdns.de
server avg(ms) min(ms) max(ms) stddev(ms) lost(%) flags
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
8.8.8.8 94.556 90.488 112.209 6.322 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
8.8.4.4 92.599 90.265 94.338 1.086 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
ns.ripe.net 92.754 91.632 93.980 0.900 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
4.2.2.1 92.703 91.869 93.298 0.482 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
4.2.2.2 93.195 91.667 94.919 1.065 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
4.2.2.3 93.118 92.076 94.835 0.835 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
4.2.2.4 94.308 92.175 103.318 3.261 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
4.2.2.5 92.650 91.643 94.460 1.002 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
209.244.0.3 92.810 89.961 94.807 1.266 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
209.244.0.4 93.127 91.962 95.970 1.227 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
195.46.39.39 92.770 90.777 93.656 0.914 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
195.46.39.40 92.903 91.280 94.914 1.147 %0 QR -- -- RD RA AD --
Author
Babak Farrokhi
- twitter: @farrokhi
- github: /farrokhi
- website: farrokhi.net
License
dnsdiag is released under a 2 clause BSD license.
Credits
- @rthalley for invaluable dnspython library
- @JustinAzoff for python-cymruwhois library
- @bortzmeyer for his feedback and patches