Even later to the party - dnsmasq v. BIND

[Simon Kelley <simon thekelleys org uk>]

Disclaimer: I wrote dnsmasq, so you shouldn't believe anything I write 
about it. :-)


Re: the discussion about dnsmasq and BIND at
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2004-December/msg00088.html

This application of one of the thing dnsmasq was designed for, you 
should definitely (IMHO) consider using it instead of BIND in 
caching-only mode.

Advantages:

1) It _is_ much smaller: I just  checked the stripped binaries in Debian 
and BIND 9 is 270K, whilst dnsmasq is 89K, with the built in DHCP 
server. (The DHCP server stays silent, unless configured, so it wouldn't 
get in the way in this application.) Amongst the niches where dnsmasq is 
found are embedded "cheap plastic routers" like the Linksys and single 
floppy router-linux distros, so I'm commited to keeping it small and 
lightweight. I didn't check total memory use against BIND, but I'd be 
surprised if that weren't even more in favour of dnsmasq than the exec 
sizes, for the same size cache.

2) dnsmasq is intended for use where the upstream nameservers can change 
underneath it. It polls /etc/resolv.conf (or equivalent, when 
resolv.conf points at 127.0.0.1 for the benefit of everything else 
running) and will read new nameservers and continue without even needing 
a restart, or losing the contents of the cache. I'll happily add a DBUS 
interface to allow new nameserver(s) to be supplied that way.

3) Configuration for use as a DNS forwarder is zero - it will work 
without a configuration file at all, if necessary.

4) I've never benchmarked dnsmasq against BIND, but as a DNS cache it's 
certainly "fast enough" even on processors which would never cope with a 
sensible desktop.


Cheers,

Simon.