Treewalk DNS - opinions ?

Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.

Following a short outage on Sky BB earlier today, i've installed it to
one of my machines, but i'm a little concerned about poisoned DNS
caches that have gained prominence lately.

Does anyone have experience of Treewalk, or info on how you ensure
you're using an unadulterated source for your DNS lookups ?

TIA :-}

In uk.telecom.broadband, on Sat, 8 Mar 2008 23:21:25, Colin Wilson
wrote:

>Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
>problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.
>
>Following a short outage on Sky BB earlier today, i've installed it to
>one of my machines, but i'm a little concerned about poisoned DNS
>caches that have gained prominence lately.
>
>Does anyone have experience of Treewalk, or info on how you ensure
>you're using an unadulterated source for your DNS lookups ?

If you use Treewalk, you will not run into poisoned caches, unless one
of the root servers has been compromised (unlikely, not impossible
though). The coders of Treewalk were aware of this problem many years
ago, and have minimised the risk. Treewalk users apparently didn't lose
YouTube when Pakistan strutted its stuff... I certainly didn't

--
Jim Crowther

Colin Wilson wrote:
> Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
> problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.

If you don't want to install your own recursive DNS server, you could
try using opendns.com instead of your ISPs servers.

Colin Wilson wrote:
> Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
> problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.

If you don't want to install your own recursive DNS server, you could
try using opendns.com instead of your ISPs servers.

> > Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
> > problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.
> If you don't want to install your own recursive DNS server, you could
> try using opendns.com instead of your ISPs servers.

Any idea of the relative merits of opendns compared to treewalk ?

Ta :-}

In uk.telecom.broadband, on Sun, 9 Mar 2008 01:08:26, Colin Wilson
wrote:

>> > Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
>> > problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.
>> If you don't want to install your own recursive DNS server, you could
>> try using opendns.com instead of your ISPs servers.
>
>Any idea of the relative merits of opendns compared to treewalk ?

Treewalk ignores all outside influences, and merely chases the true DNS
answer from the highest authority it can find. No third party involved,
it's your computer getting the Real McCoy from the authoritative DNS
devices out there. DNSRU results below (127.0.0.1 is Treewalk):


192.168. 2. 1 | DNS queries are not answered at this IP.

127. 0. 0. 1 | Min | Avg | Max |Std.Dev|Reliab%|
----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
Cached Name | 0.000 | 0.000 | 0.000 | 0.000 | 100.0 |
Uncached Name | 0.023 | 0.151 | 0.307 | 0.068 | 100.0 |
DotCom Lookup | 0.024 | 0.107 | 0.307 | 0.069 | 100.0 |
----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

81.187.216. 89 | Min | Avg | Max |Std.Dev|Reliab%|
----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
Cached Name | 0.022 | 0.075 | 0.197 | 0.049 | 98.5 |
Uncached Name | 0.029 | 0.220 | 0.403 | 0.080 | 99.5 |
DotCom Lookup | 0.029 | 0.150 | 0.315 | 0.076 | 99.0 |
----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

UTC: 2008-03-09, from 03:21:11 to 03:22:21, for 01:09.562


--
Jim Crowther

On 08/03/2008 23:42, Jim Crowther wrote:

> Treewalk users apparently didn't lose
> YouTube when Pakistan strutted its stuff...

DNS was in no way relevant to the youtube hijack, which was done by BGP
usuping the actual IP routes.

Colin Wilson wrote:
>>> Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
>>> problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.
>> If you don't want to install your own recursive DNS server, you could
>> try using opendns.com instead of your ISPs servers.
>
> Any idea of the relative merits of opendns compared to treewalk ?

You don't have to install a third-party piece of software, opendns has
some interesting (optional) features such as phishing protection and
content filtering which are useful in some situations.

Not everyone runs Microsoft Windows or wants/needs to run their own
recursive nameservers. You might want to set alternative nameservers in
your router so that roaming users/laptops benefit from the non-ISP
servers without having to install software on their machines.

Treewalk is only free for personal use and some people will want to
bypass their ISPs DNS servers in a public/business/corporate environment
- opendns is free in these situations as well I believe.

Regards,

> Treewalk ignores all outside influences, and merely chases the true DNS
> answer from the highest authority it can find. No third party involved,
> it's your computer getting the Real McCoy from the authoritative DNS
> devices out there.

Thanks - I might just leave it on the one machine for now, but see how
it handles next time Sky goes belly-up :-}

Jim Crowther wrote:
> In uk.telecom.broadband, on Sat, 8 Mar 2008 23:21:25, Colin Wilson wrote:
>
>> Going back a couple of years, users with NTL who had regular DNS
>> problems were often recommended TreewalkDNS as a workaround.
>>
>> Following a short outage on Sky BB earlier today, i've installed it to
>> one of my machines, but i'm a little concerned about poisoned DNS
>> caches that have gained prominence lately.
>>
>> Does anyone have experience of Treewalk, or info on how you ensure
>> you're using an unadulterated source for your DNS lookups ?
>
> If you use Treewalk, you will not run into poisoned caches, unless one
> of the root servers has been compromised (unlikely, not impossible
> though). The coders of Treewalk were aware of this problem many years
> ago, and have minimised the risk. Treewalk users apparently didn't lose
> YouTube when Pakistan strutted its stuff... I certainly didn't
>
That was not AFAIK a DNS issue. It was done via routing tables being
propagated.