dns usage?

[Peter Dambier]

Andersen wrote:
> How many users does DNS serve per day? Is there any statistics of this
> sort? Any references, any numbers?
> 

I dont believe this can be answered.

First guess, every host needs DNS so the number of served hosts must be
the total number of hosts.

Wrong, because of NAT. There are more hosts than the total number of hosts.

You might be able to ask the root but with anycast and alternative roots
you wont get them all. All you will get are the monkeys asking for ".local".
Chances are the well behaved hosts will hide behind some recursive resolvers
and you will see only one of a million.

Going down from the root will get more interesting results but you will
only see a fraction of all queries. Adding results from different domains
does not make sense either because you will catch one and the some host
more than once.

My best guess, take a big isolated network and serve it with a single
one recursive resolver. Look into the statistics of this server. I think
you will find all your local hosts every day. Even if it is not true, say
you are not working sunday and saturday but forget people might be on
holiday. Now you are on 5/7 or 70% of all hosts. I guess the real number
will be higher.

Private users are a different spezies. They get rapidly changeing ip-addresses
and they mostly hide behind the isp resolver. It is difficult to guesstimate
how densely populated the isp address space is. It is an interesting guestion
how many host hide behind each NAT?

<IRONY> Ask the NSA. They probably know. </IRONY>

Cheers
Peter and Karin Dambier

-- 
Peter and Karin Dambier
The Public-Root Consortium
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