robdns: infrastructure DNS server

This is a fast super-slave DNS server, designed to be constantly attacked on the public Internet. The intent is to shield master servers that are hidden behind firewalls. The key feature is a built-in custom TCP/IP stack capable of handling millions of DNS queries-per-second per CPU core.

Currently, this tool is in a prototype stage. It parses records and responds to queries on port 53, but it's missing key features such as dynamic updates.

Building

The only dependency is libpcap-dev (or WinPcap).

Just type make to build the software on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows (MinGW).

The included XCode4 and VS10 projects should also work on Mac and Windows respectively.

Running

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.

Feature status

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

Authors

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