1 2$Id: README,v 1.1 2001/07/12 02:02:09 gson Exp $ 3 4This is queryperf, a DNS server query performance testing tool. 5 6It is primarily intended for measuring the performance of 7authoritative DNS servers, but it has also been used for measuring 8caching server performance. This document describes the use of 9queryperf for authoritative server performance testing. 10 11 12Building 13 14To build queryperf, just do 15 16 sh configure 17 make 18 19 20The test environment 21 22It is recommended that you run queryperf and the name server under 23test on separate machines, so that the CPU usage of queryperf itself 24does not slow down the name server. The two machines should be 25connected with a fast network, preferably a dedicated 100baseT 26segment. Testing through a router or firewall is not advisable. 27 28 29Configuring the server 30 31The name server under test should be set up as an authoritative 32server, serving one or more zones similar in size and number to 33what the server is expected to serve in production. 34 35Be sure to turn off recursion in the server's configuration 36(in BIND 8/9, specify "recursion no;" in the options block). 37In BIND 8, you should also specify "fetch-glue no;"; otherwise 38the server may attempt to retrieve glue information from the 39Internet during the test, slowing it down by an unpredictable 40factor. 41 42 43Constructing the input file 44 45You need to construct a queryperf input file containing a large and 46realistic set of queries, on the order of ten thousand to a million. 47The input file contains one line per query, consisting of a domain 48name and an RR type name separated by a space. The class of the 49query is implicitly IN. 50 51When measuring the performance serving non-terminal zones such as the 52root zone or TLDs, note that such servers spend most of their time 53providing referral responses, not authoritative answers. Therefore, a 54realistic input file might consist mostly of queries for type A for 55names *below*, not at, the delegations present in the zone. For 56example, when testing the performance of a server configured to be 57authoritative for the top-level domain "fi.", which contains 58delegations for domains like "helsinki.fi" and "turku.fi", the input 59file could contain lines like 60 61 www.turku.fi A 62 www.helsinki.fi A 63 64where the "www" prefix ensures that the server will respond with a 65referral. Ideally, a realistic proportion of queries for nonexistent 66domains should be mixed in with those for existing ones, and the lines 67of the input file should be in a random order. 68 69 70Running the tests 71 72Queryperf is run specifying the input file using the "-d" option, as 73in 74 75 queryperf -d input_file -s server 76 77The output of queryperf is mostly self-explanatory. Pay attention to 78the number of dropped packets reported - when running the test over a 79local Ethernet connection, it should be zero. If one or more packets 80has been dropped, there may be a problem with the network connection. 81In that case, the results should be considered suspect and the test 82repeated. 83