$Id: README,v 1.1.1.1 2001-07-12 02:02:09 gson Exp $ This is queryperf, a DNS server query performance testing tool. It is primarily intended for measuring the performance of authoritative DNS servers, but it has also been used for measuring caching server performance. This document describes the use of queryperf for authoritative server performance testing. Building To build queryperf, just do sh configure make The test environment It is recommended that you run queryperf and the name server under test on separate machines, so that the CPU usage of queryperf itself does not slow down the name server. The two machines should be connected with a fast network, preferably a dedicated 100baseT segment. Testing through a router or firewall is not advisable. Configuring the server The name server under test should be set up as an authoritative server, serving one or more zones similar in size and number to what the server is expected to serve in production. Be sure to turn off recursion in the server's configuration (in BIND 8/9, specify "recursion no;" in the options block). In BIND 8, you should also specify "fetch-glue no;"; otherwise the server may attempt to retrieve glue information from the Internet during the test, slowing it down by an unpredictable factor. Constructing the input file You need to construct a queryperf input file containing a large and realistic set of queries, on the order of ten thousand to a million. The input file contains one line per query, consisting of a domain name and an RR type name separated by a space. The class of the query is implicitly IN. When measuring the performance serving non-terminal zones such as the root zone or TLDs, note that such servers spend most of their time providing referral responses, not authoritative answers. Therefore, a realistic input file might consist mostly of queries for type A for names *below*, not at, the delegations present in the zone. For example, when testing the performance of a server configured to be authoritative for the top-level domain "fi.", which contains delegations for domains like "helsinki.fi" and "turku.fi", the input file could contain lines like www.turku.fi A www.helsinki.fi A where the "www" prefix ensures that the server will respond with a referral. Ideally, a realistic proportion of queries for nonexistent domains should be mixed in with those for existing ones, and the lines of the input file should be in a random order. Running the tests Queryperf is run specifying the input file using the "-d" option, as in queryperf -d input_file -s server The output of queryperf is mostly self-explanatory. Pay attention to the number of dropped packets reported - when running the test over a local Ethernet connection, it should be zero. If one or more packets has been dropped, there may be a problem with the network connection. In that case, the results should be considered suspect and the test repeated.