Re: djbdns: An alternative to BIND

[sthaug () nethelp no]

> > > I had a play with DJBDNS after using BIND for years. Here's why I
> > > switched back:
> > > - No AXFR support
> > It supports this.
>
> No IXFR, no automatic notification of bind slaves (you get to run a
> separate notify script) ...
>
> But yes, it is far easier to use, consumes very low amounts of memory
> and makes an excellent local resolver cache e&oe no roundrobin DNS
> without a patch (as in it returns all the A records in the same order
> every time, whereas bind does this in a different order ...)

A contrary view from the trenches:

Around a year ago we tested DJB dnscache as the recursive DNS server
in a high-volume ISP environment - mostly because we were not happy
with BIND 9 performance at the time. Our conclusions were:

- dnscache used *more* CPU than BIND 9 in our environment, effectively
ruling it out
- Not possible to get dnscache to listen to more than one IP address
unless you introduce hacks/patches
- Weird failures reported from users
- Annoying installation process with lots of small programs that we
don't want or need

We then used BIND 8 for a while, due to its better performance than
BIND 9. Earlier this year we finally found a BIND 9 configuration and
version that worked well for us (but still too low performance). We
finally switched to Nominum CNS (two servers) and one BIND 9 server
as backup. We really like Nominum CNS, and we're happy.

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug () nethelp no