[Qatar-pm] [List] Qtel DNS performance

[Nigel Gourlay]

> i think we can use this as a better alternative 193.0.14.129
> (k.root-servers.net) , can you check nigel?

Here are the results from a local copy of bind on a West-Coast USA server.

Unregistered
min/avg/max/stddev = 5.394/25.400/171.496/32.290 ms
Popular
min/avg/max/stddev = 1.497/2.213/4.106/0.510 ms

I think a really well run DNS server in Qatar could respond to a
cached request in less than 5 ms plus network latency, but no end user
is going to care that the average DNS request is taking 25 ms rather
than 35 ms, or that 95% of requests are within 30 ms rather than 150
ms.

The performance of Qtel's DNS isn't bad enough for a replacement to
make much difference. However, there are certain to be other
applications, such as NTP, which Qtel aren't providing that could
usefully be maintained by QGLUG. Andy suggested a local METAR weather
archive. Any other suggestions???

--nigel