Parsing Millions of DNS Records Per Second

Abstract

ObjectivesTo enhance the throughput of DNS parsing by addressing the computational expense of processing large plain text DNS zone files.To specifically increase the speed of parsing DNS zone files compared to existing state‐of‐the‐art parsers.MethodDevelopment of a new approach named simdzone for DNS parsing.Utilization of data parallelism through Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions available on modern processors to accelerate parsing operations.ResultThe simdzone approach significantly increased parsing speeds, being several times faster than the parsers in Knot DNS and NLnet Labs' Name Server Daemon (NSD).The software library developed from this approach was integrated into NSD, replacing its previous parser.ConclusionThe implementation of SIMD‐based data parallelism in DNS parsing provides a substantial performance improvement, making it a viable solution for handling large DNS zone files more efficiently. This not only reduces processing time but also enhances the overall functionality of DNS services.