A DNS probe helps the CZ.NIC association with a more efficient collection of data

The Accelerated Network Technologies Research Group (ANT@FIT) has been co-operating with the CZ.NIC association since 2018 on the creation of a probe for monitoring DNS traffic (DNS probe). Drawing on its experience with fast network traffic processing, the group helped develop a probe that can process DNS traffic very quickly using regular commodity hardware through the AF_PACKET interface or the DPDK system. In addition to receiving and processing packets, it was also necessary to find a solution for efficient implementation of the transaction table in the probe and to ensure easy configuration and export of the record in the new Compacted-DNS (C-DNS) format. The entire data collection system using monitoring probes was placed in the infrastructure of the CZ.NIC association, as stated on the CZ.NIC employee blog or on the Lupa.cz server (in Czech). Thanks to the created probe, the number of reported transactions for the TCP protocol was increased by 5% to 10%.

"Our cooperation with the CZ.NIC association does not end with the DNS probe. We will continue to work together on the use of FPGA accelerator cards used to speed up and reduce the latency of responses to DNS queries. This project is still in its initial phase, but we believe that, over time, we will be able to reach the production deployment, as was the case with the DNS probe," says Jan Kořenek, head researcher of the ANT@FIT group.