Need recomendation on DNS server

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

I've recently broke down and gotten satellite internet service out here in the sticks (zip 39074). It's throughput is useable but the latency is downright terrible. I wanted to look into hosting a local DNS server for caching and reducing the amount of trips up and down the sat link.

I had a couple windows servers at my old house but that is way overkill. At my current spot I don't really have room for the 9 computers I was running in Ohio. I just have my main desktop and 2 laptops + networking gear running now.

Could you guys recommend a decent (preferably free) caching DNS server?

[Rhuobhe]

This will increase your latency by 32.33% repeating of course.

[royo]

OpenDNS.com

[Drave]

Originally Posted by royo

OpenDNS.com

/agree 100%

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

Thanks guys I'll check out OpenDNS.

This will increase your latency by 32.33% repeating of course.

Actually the proxy server they have is pretty decent. You request a page and their proxy downloads the whole page and sends it to you in one burst. So while there are plenty of things I dislike about the service, I can't really complain about the browsing performance.

[Drave]

Hey Jaytee,

After looking over your original post, I think I misread your original question. If you're looking for a local (your end of the pipe) DNS resolved/cached, then I think that BIND is what you're looking for, though you could setup a local proxy server to do the same thing.

Originally Posted by Jaytee Bushwacker

Actually the proxy server they have is pretty decent. You request a page and their proxy downloads the whole page and sends it to you in one burst. So while there are plenty of things I dislike about the service, I can't really complain about the browsing performance.

What performance (network application) are you trying to improve, if not browsing?

OpenDNS rocks (huge name caches + great features), but the names are still resolved on the distant-end. Easy to setup, you just use their IP addresses for DNS entries and you're done.

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

Well I want to generally speed up the responsiveness overall anyway I can. For example while a page may load fairly fast the initial http get takes a bit because my computer has to do a dns query from my machine up sat/down to dns server then up to sat back down to me before I can request the initial page load. By doing a local caching DNS server that I can resolve to locally I'll cut down on the over the sat link a lot.

So Bind might be a better option, I'll be looking at it this weekend thank you.

[radyvix]

i know it may be too late, but i can't stand satellite at the client sites that actually have to use it. What i've recommended is either long range wireless (unlicensed microwave via Canopy or similar from an in city provider) which you can go 50+ miles depending on line of sight with, or get a 3g att/verizon (preferred verizon) card and serve internet from the workstation attached to that. as for your caching problem though, we use squid at our NOC to do filtering and caching for a number of clients.

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

It's never too late =)

I have no other option except sat really. Everything else is to expensive... $12,000 just to build out a T1 line or build my own tower which would have to be at least 60' to get over the tree line and I'd still have to have something I'm connecting to. I am ~5 miles as the crow flies from the closest cellular tower so 3g will not work (I already tried it too) even with a 3 watt amp.

My wife is a microwave engineer who designs wireless communications systems and I tried to coerce her into making me a bigger amp but she refused sighting those silly FCC regs.

But I hear you...the sat sucks unless it is absolutely the only thing except dial-up. /cry for my old 6Mbit dsl line