
DNS tools for developers - hughesey
http://www.viewdns.info/
======
zaphoyd
A friendly reminder from a sysadmin/web app developer who has to deal with dns
and network issues in the real world and would like to use a nice clean UI
tool like this: Lack of IPv6 support is a deal breaker.

EDIT: for friendliness.

~~~
gabyar
This is very useful, and to call it disappointing is rude to the creator of
the tool. Why would you say something so negative just because it's not
perfect? This is the problem with Hacker News these days - people can't wait
to say something nasty.

~~~
rodly
Pointing out the flaws in a service is better than not posting at all. The
creator can then use these criticisms and make the service better.

~~~
waffle
"Better"... according to a guy on the Internet.

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guylhem
It's a nice website, but _developers_ would be more inspired to try tools such
as dnrd which allows one to run multiple dns servers on one machine and
reverse-proxy the requests.

Ex on my dsl modem where I love to test stuff:

dnrd-port53 -a 192.168.178.1 -m off -s 127.0.0.1:mydomain.com -s
127.0.0.2:local -s 127.0.0.4:fritz.box -s 127.0.0.4:178.168.192.in-addr.arpa
-s 213.16.20.51 -s 213.188.172.70 -s 74.82.42.42 -u dns -R /tmp/dnrd -l

This runs dnrd (hardcoded to bind on port 53 - I sometimes use other ports),
and case switch the requests : if it ends by .mydomain.com, it goes to
127.0.0.1 if it ends by .local, it goes to 127.0.0.2 if it ends by .fritz.box,
it goes to 127.0.0.4 if it ends by .178.168.192.in-addr.arpa (reverse), it
goes to 127.0.0.4 everything else goes to 213.16.20.51, 213.188.172.70,
74.82.42.42 : if one stops responding it's removed from the list and the
others are used.

 _THAT_ is a tool for developpers.

Shameless plug : bind6.c on
<http://code.google.com/p/guylhem/source/browse/bind6.c> : if you also have a
fritzbox dsl modem, you can "force bind" its default dns server to a given
ip:53 instead of *:53, allowing another servers on say 127.0.0.1 :

killall multid; LD_PRELOAD=bind6.so BIND_IPV6=::ffff:127.0.0.4 /sbin/multid -v
-d -U -P

------
flyt
robtex.com is my go-to for DNS/AS/IP info.

google.com domain report: <http://www.robtex.com/dns/google.com.html#summary>

google AS peering info: <http://www.robtex.com/as/as15169.html#peer>

netblock info: <http://www.robtex.com/route/74.125.0.0-16---google.html>

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JOfferijns
Very useful!

It seems this was posted by the developer of this site himself, so I've got a
feature request: combining these tools. For example, you enter a domain name
or IP address and you get the following information:

\- DNS report

\- Reverse IP

\- Port scan

\- Chinese/Iran Firewall test

\- DNSSEC

\- IP location (maybe of nameserver IPs as well?)

\- PageRank check

\- Traceroute

\- Ping

\- DNS records

\- HTTP headers

\- Spam DB lookup

\- ASN

Adding this would make things a whole lot easier, I hope you will consider it!

~~~
redler
There's an API[1], so this is something one could throw together pretty
easily, assuming there are no limits to prevent it.

[1] <http://viewdns.info/api/>

------
ioquatix
If this is interesting for you, you may also be interested in my
<http://www.oriontransfer.co.nz/gems/rubydns> tools.

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gergles
Seems a little buggy:

"Oops! Your SOA serial number (2012041402) doesn't seem to be in the
recommended format (YYYYMMDDnn - where nn is the revision number)."

Looks like it's in that format to me?

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jbarham
The command-line tools bundled with djbdns are nice
(<http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/tools.html> &
<http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/debugging.html>) and IMO are easier to use than dig.

<http://www.dnsvalidation.com/> is also a nicely done site for checking DNS
configuration.

~~~
stock_toaster
The drill tool that NSD built atop ldns[1] is pretty sweet too. Some of the
other ldns tools are quite useful too.

[1]: <http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/ldns/>

------
huhtenberg
The DNS propagation checker -- is there an existing framework that this site
interfaces or is it something that they rolled out on their own? I've seen
some services that use a dozen of servers to run the check, but this is hardly
sufficient ad it excludes the last mile (where all the fun stuff is).

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stevenjgarner
I think it is especially amusing that (according to viewdns.info), dnssec.net
itself does not have DNSSEC enabled (while it is producing a response for
verisign.com for example). Thoughts on the virtues of DNSSEC? Why are you
(not) using it?

------
brokentone
I'm interested in more details about how the "Iran Firewall Test" works. It
shows my site as blocked, while I can confirm it elsewhere, it would be nice
to know how this determined that.

~~~
jtheory
I suspect it's getting hammered at the moment -- the Iran check returned an
error for me, and the Google page rank check for "google.com" or "yahoo.com"
still reports "Sorry, we couldn't seem to find that domain in Google's cache."

To the developer: this is a great time to refine the error handling (plus
scaling, of course). :)

E.g., make sure when the requests fail (for whatever reason) that it can
report this back to the user clearly.

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nphase
Awesome! It's like dnsstuff but free again! Thanks!

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kenny_r
I woulnd't say this is just for developers, I'm a sysadmin and this is
definitely something I'll add to my toolbox.

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known
<http://mrdns.com/> is also good

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clippit
I love the Chinese Firewall Test XD

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mkramlich
+1 for having an API. I'm increasingly on a rampage to replace anything I
currently have to do via GUI or web browser with something I can do via CLI or
API. So much faster, more automatable, less visual fluff and cognitive
overhead.

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huoju
Cool! "Chinese Firewall Test"..

