dns-benchmark

DNS query response latency benchmark.

It measures the total time it takes to make DNS queries for Alexa top 1000 websites. The queries are done sequentially to measure the worst case latency rather than throughput. dig command is used to make and time DNS queries to specific DNS servers.

Usage

$ git clone https://github.com/max0x7ba/dns-benchmark.git
$ cd dns-benchmark
$ ./dns-benchmark.py -h
usage: dns-benchmark.py [-h] [-n COUNT] [-s IP] [-S]

Benchmark DNS query time.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -n COUNT, --count COUNT
                        The number of requests to make, 0 means no limit. Default is 1000.
  -s IP, --dns IP       A comma-separated list of DNS server IP addresses. Default is system.
  -S, --serial          Don't query in parallel.

In the following example I measure the latencies of Google (8.8.8.8), Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), router (192.168.50.1) and system DNSs. The time is reported in seconds.

$ ./dns-benchmark.py --dns 8.8.8.8,1.1.1.1,192.168.50.1,system
It may take minutes, please wait...
            dns,    time,    queries,     errors
        8.8.8.8,  56.633,       1000,         16
        1.1.1.1,  12.089,       1000,         15
   192.168.50.1,   8.679,       1000,         15
         system,  13.443,       1000,         15

In my setup, system and router (192.168.50.1) DNS use Cloudflare DNS and this is why their times are similar. The router times are the best because it runs dnsmasq that caches DNS responses and is able to resolve some of the queries locally.

Portability

The script requires Python 3 and dig command line utility.

It has been tested on:

• Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS.
• Windows 10 with Windows Subsystem for Linux and Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS.
• Android 10 phone with Termux terminal emulator. Requires installing git, dig, python in Termux and using --serial command line option.

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Copyright (c) 2020 Maxim Egorushkin. MIT License. See the full licence in file LICENSE.