Setting static DNS

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>

| James Knott wrote:
| > Just out of curiousity, what will using your own DNS accomplish, when
| > you're not on your network?
| 
| Mainly buggy/laggy DNS resolvers. Dealing with that at this hotel now.

[I'm not trying to answer your question.]

I wonder if you might be better off running a caching name server on
your laptop, one that does not make recursive DNS queries.  In
other words, it walks the DNS tree itself rather than using
other servers to do the work.

Why caching?  So that the same queries get answered efficiently.  Very 
important if your system is walking the tree itsel -- think of how 
many times it would be asking about .com!

Why not make recursive queries?  Because the servers that you seem to
want to avoid are the ones that handle recursive queries.  Besides,
many of the pathologies of DNS involve recursive queries.

Why not use your home-base DNS (i.e. handing it recursive queries)?
Here's an argument.  A bit tricky.  It uses something like mathematical
induction.

Case A: your home-base DNS does not make recursive queries.

Your home-base DNS will make exactly the same queries as the setup I
propose, and add the transit time between your laptop and your home
base.  Plus this configuration is fragile in some ways (another single
point of failure, for example).

Case B: your home-base DNS makes recursive queries.
Then you could set up your laptop to make its own recursive queries to
the same server (I'm ignoring the fact that that server might refuse
queries from some foreign client).  This would reduce several trips.
And this reduces to Case A, effectively.
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