pingdns

A simple tool to "ping" (send a query and get an answer) the dns server.
It's written to mimic the standard ping utility so it is really easy to understand the output.

dependencies

bash
grep
dig

compatibility

tested on CentOS 6/7, Debian 7 and OS X 10.10

installation

Download the pingdns file, set the execution bit and make a symlink from /usr/bin/pingdns
like that:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/deseven/pingdns/master/pingdns --output /opt/pingdns  
chmod +x /opt/pingdns  
ln -s /opt/pingdns /usr/bin/pingdns

usage

pingdns [-hctqrs] dns
dns - dns server address
-h to show the help
-c count to stop after sending 'count' requests
-t sec to set the query timeout to 'sec' seconds
-q query to force sending the defined 'query'
-r to generate random queries
-s to be silent and print only results
-f to enable ping flood
By default (without -r or -q switch) the query will be populated from top 1000 sites.
Also, don't forget that query (and answer) validity is not important, what is important is the fact that we got an answer and how fast that happened.