DNS: A Statistical Analysis of Name Server Traffic at Local Network-to-Internet Connections

This paper puts forward a purely statistical analysis of name server traffic captured at four different locations: two links to residential networks, and two to the Dutch academic and research institute. Analysis of the system can give insight in the use and performance of the protocol, which is helpful for future improvement. Multiple analyses can show the development of the performance over time and help create quality models. The analysis shows that a little more than 12% of all queries are not answered upon. Three quarters of the lookups are successful: they give the client the correct IP address mapping for the requested hostname. 90% is answered within 275 ms, with an average of 152 ms. In 9% of all cases, clients ask for a hostname which does not exist. At one of the locations, a client is discovered which sends queries to two DNS servers at a remarkable rate: one each 11 to 22 ms.