Dns

One of the first things that irked me after my Precise installation was how DNS suddenly seemed slow. I normally use dnscache for local DNS caching and while setting it up this time, I noticed that oddly, 127.0.0.1 was already setup as my name server. Netstat told me that this was handled by DNSMasq for some reason. No worries, I thought, and I setup dnscache on 127.0.0.2 instead. I added the IP to the prepend nameserver option in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.

The latest Ubuntu releases makes it real easy to set up a local DNS cache for your workstation using dnscache from the well-known djbdns software by D. J. Bernstein. For those who have historically installed djbdns/ucspi-tcp/daemontools from source because of distribution restrictions, things changed really for the better after DJB placed all these software in the public domain in 2007. You can now setup all this in about one minute! (depending on your Internet connection though.

Akamai footprint awesomeness. My IP address. sandipb@pluto:~$ wget -O - -q http://www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp;echo 122.167.0.79 sandipb@pluto:~$ host 122.167.0.79 79.0.167.122.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer ABTS-KK-Dynamic-079.0.167.122.airtelbroadband.in. Akamai CDN for downloading Adobe AIR. sandipb@pluto:~$ host airdownload.adobe.com airdownload.adobe.com is an alias for airdownload.wip3.adobe.com. airdownload.wip3.adobe.com is an alias for airdownload.adobe.com.edgesuite.net. airdownload.adobe.com.edgesuite.net is an alias for a1396.g.akamai.net. a1396.g.akamai.net has address 203.101.62.10 a1396.g.akamai.net has address 203.101.62.11 sandipb@pluto:~$ host 203.101.62.10 10.62.101.203.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer dsl-KK-static-010.62.101.203.airtelbroadband.in. I am downloading from a server co-located at my ISP.