Running a caching DNS server on my LAN

1

2

I have a Raspberry Pi, and I'd like to use it as a DNS server on my LAN.

I'd like it to work like the following:

The Raspberry Pi is a DNS server, but not a fancy one. When it receives a request, if it doesn't have the result cached, it looks it up from another DNS server, and caches it for future.

I've looked at a few solutions, but they're all fiendishly complex, as if I'm setting up some kind of uber DNS solution for an enterprise.

All I want is to speed up repeated DNS requests to make web browsing faster.

Oh, OS is Debian Squeeze.

Rory

Posted 2012-05-29T11:50:02.457

Reputation: 729

Don't standard routers cache DNS lookups? At the very least, custom router firmware should do it... and should be more efficient than running an extra device. – Bob – 2012-05-29T11:54:20.753

Hey, how's the performance with that setup? I wanted to run my DNS & DHCP servers on a Raspberri Pi to replace a Mini-ITX machine. – gparent – 2012-07-18T17:31:35.607

Answers

1

Two simple solutions:

1) Run DJB's dnscache - it does exactly what you want, and nothing more, and once you get your head around configuring it, it's light and unobtrusive.

2) Run dnsmasq. It's a more full-featured DNS/DHCP server that can be configured quite easily to do what you want (it's what I use on my home LAN)

D_Bye

Posted 2012-05-29T11:50:02.457

Reputation: 474

0

Bind 9 caching only nameserver: http://www.bind9.net/manual/bind/9.3.2/Bv9ARM.ch03.html

Note that this won't necessarily make browsing faster, because your browser usually already caches DNS lookups.

pjc50

Posted 2012-05-29T11:50:02.457

Reputation: 5 786

Asked: 2012-05-29T11:50:02.457

Viewed: 2 636 times

Active: 2012-05-29T13:15:30.060