8.3 vs 8.4

Paul Vixie vixie at sa.vix.com
Sat Dec 6 06:47:54 UTC 2003


Jan Gyselinck <bind-users at lists.b0rken.net> writes:

> It's a fact that a dual CPU Sun with BIND9 performs equally well
> (worse in some case, better in other) than a BIND8.  Only, it
> requires the double amount of memory (if not more) and it uses
> the two CPU's while BIND8 can only use one CPU.  What an
> improvement.

we're working on that, thanks in part to a contract with the unix vendors.

> Config file options changed.  Don't use a BIND8 config file for BIND9
> (unless it's very basic and, well, not suited for production use).
> Logging is completely different for one.

logging is slightly different, not completely different.

> No, that's not a show stopper.  But if there's no advantage in going
> to BIND9 (other than support for the bleeding edge DNS additions),
> the 'minor' pains are just an additional reason why not to migrate.

how about, people who have been in the source code for both systems, have
absolutely refused to run BIND8 after BIND9 got stable (9.1 or so.)

> 1 GB RAM is not enough for BIND9 for a modest ISP.

so, we recently upgraded a sun in our lab from 256MB to 1.2GB, for $200.

> A 'bit'?  Twice as fast is not what I call 'a bit'.  Makes you wonder,
> BIND8, a product of coding and coding and fixing etc etc etc,
> which makes some horrible source code, which is still faster than
> BIND9, a product redesigned from the ground.

like i said, we're working on the performance delta.  it turns out that
BIND9 has some unfortunate overgeneralities that were due to protocol
elements like bitstring labels, which are no longer present, and DNSSEC.
ripping these out and/or making them optional is taking some time, but
i think in the first half of 2004 you should be pleasantly surprised.

> Obviously for a lot of us those extra features don't outweight the
> performance loss from BIND9.

it's a rare system indeed that's running in the headroom delta from BIND8
to BIND9.  in other words if you're running a BIND8 system at CPU loads
which frequently exceed 40% utilization then you've got other problems.

AOL is now selling a pee cee for USD$299 that would run BIND9 just fine.

we run BIND9 on f-root, which is one of the world's busiest name servers.

if you frame the question as "why is it so slow?" then my answer is, we're
working on it.  if on the other hand you frame it as "i havn't got enough
hardware to run something that slow" then my answer is "then you havn't
got enough hardware to run anything else, either, please go spend $299 on
a new AOL pee cee."
-- 
Paul Vixie


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