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September 6, 2006 4:00 AM PDT
Will Vista stall Net traffic?
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Microsoft's launch of Windows Vista could slow down or stall traffic on the Net, said Paul Mockapetris, who is widely credited with inventing the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). Mockapetris believes Vista's introduction will cause a surge in DNS traffic because the operating system supports two versions of the Internet Protocol, a technology standard used to send information over computer networks.
DNS inventor
"If you adopt Vista, your DNS traffic is going to double," Mockapetris said in an interview. With many DNS servers already running close to capacity, this can have serious consequences, he said. "You're going to see brownouts. All of a sudden, it is going to be mud season on the Internet, where things will just be kind of slow and gooey."
Vista may cause an increase in DNS traffic, but not to the extent predicted by Mockapetris, Microsoft countered in a statement provided to CNET News.com last week. Other experts support Microsoft and suggest Mockapetris' predictions are related to his role at Nominum, the Redwood City, Calif., vendor of DNS products where he is chief scientist.
Others agree that Vista could cause a spike in DNS traffic. But they're not expecting dire consequences. "Vista, due to its support for IPv6, will cause somewhat higher load on name servers as it checks to see which protocol to use," said Dan Kaminsky, an independent researcher. "But this is not the stuff that blackouts are made of."
Vista is the first Windows version to support the new IP version 6, which is designed to provide a broader range of IP addresses. As current IPv4 addresses are becoming scarce, IPv6 will provide easier connectivity across the Internet and remove the need for IPv4-addressing schemes such as network address translation, which can require additional management burdens and cause application incompatibilities.
But IPv6 is far from being universally used. So, Vista will also support the current IPv4. The side effect, according to Mockapetris, is that a Vista PC will make two DNS requests, one for each IP version, instead of just one.
"It is going to try a DNS lookup for the IPv6 address and then a DNS lookup for the IPv4 address," Mockapetris said. "It just uses more DNS, and until we increase the supply, things are going to go slower."
DNS is crucial to the Internet. It functions as a phone book, mapping text-based addresses such as www.cnet.com to the actual numeric IP address. DNS servers are typically run by Internet service providers, hosting companies and larger businesses that have Net connectivity.
Nominum commissioned a survey of the DNS servers run by large broadband ISPs. "It looks like they are right at the knee and curve and if Vista was all of a sudden deployed everywhere, we'd be having rolling blackouts," Mockapetris said. "For my home network, it is not going to matter, but for these people with millions of users, it is going to matter."
See more CNET content tagged:
domain name, IPv4, DNS, IPv6, Nominum Inc.
83 comments
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This guy is a complete idiot.
Yes, Vista has support for IPv6. But guess what, so does XP and 2000. It is not the main DNS method in Vista, and you have to manually turn support for it on for it to work.
And besides, just because the machine has support for IPv6 doesn't mean that you're using an IPv6 IP address to connect to the internet.... why would your PC even care about IPv6 at a time like that?
worms, and spam being spread over the internet through Outlook
and zombie windows boxes...
Now Vista will up the traffic by default.. as well as being a host for
viruses and malware.
How is Vista going to clog the internet? Do do that, it has to be used, meaning you have to have people willing to buy it or upgrade to it first. So far I haven't seen anyone standing in line yet. It seems IT departments are moving more to the attitude of "if it works now, then don't upgrade it."
DNS regardless of how many protocols are installed on a given machine is a very thin process. It takes quite a bit to overload a DNS server, you would be more likely to overload the network connection before the DNS servers. Even in the event that you couldn't get to a DNS server, you'd be refered to another one, that is how the system is structured. The likelyness of a root server being taken out is slim, even so, there are redundant systems in place and there are more than 1 root server.
Guy needs to get some more edumacation.
Microsoft is anti business anti any corporation other than Microsoft and anti innovation.
Second, Mockapetris WROTE the DNS protocol, I think he's a bit more edumacated than you.
Finally - the article misses a critical element. Mockapetris is talking about the risk that ISPs don't have sufficient CACHING DNS resources. In DNS, reducdancy is most significant when it comes to AUTHORITATIVE servers - where you routinely have three servers and can go to many more. You can generally only enter two caching DNS servers, and the servers at many ISPs are very close to capacity (due to lack of attention).
I think it's quite likely that Mockapetris is overhyping the issue, since Nominum has a product to sell. But I have personally experienced major problems with latent CACHING DNS from my ISP - which uses a third party that wholesales to a number of other ISPs. The servers are close to maxed out, and having a number of clients start double requesting could make like hell. And, of course, no one at the ISP knows diddly about DNS.
"Guy needs to get some more edumacation [SIC]."? Really? The guy who is credited with INVENTING DNS needs to get more "edumacation" about DNS?
He may be alarmist, but better to err on the side of caution when dealing with Microsoft. I have no confidence in the claims of a company that has a history of poor and insecure coding.
The only reason I think he is wrong is because I don't think anybody will upgrade to Vista, at least not quickly. Vista is the most significant resource hog Microsoft has ever produced, snarfing up a huge amount of disk space, RAM and CPU cycles for marginal visual improvements. I'm sticking with W2K and WinXP until Microsoft stops supporting them, and then I'm switching to Linux or a Mac.
B.
"On by default" seems to be the whole issue here.
This whole conversation is FUD. I think the reason it was put on this website is so the writer could use FUD in the article.
Oh, btw, OP, bad form to abbreviate Washington.
But the blame isn;t just on MSFT: IPv6 is coming anyway, and DNS services should've been written to anticipate this no matter which OS is asking (e.g. look at the inbound query source addy and determine version from its format, then format the reply to the asking machine as appropriate).
The answer: Because it's fashionable to blame Microsoft for everything.
We have a moral responsibility to point out as many flaws in Vista as we can. This gives Microsoft a chance to fix some of the most disturbing issues, and with any luck, we can talk a few users out of upgrading. Perhaps we can even talk a few people into moving up to Linux.
Vista with its wide open security will slow down the Internet. This is just one small straw.
support?
figure that way I'll be right at least half the time, but this is just
silly. As a Mac user who's had IPv6 capable systems for years now,
I'm glad to see Microsoft finally adding the support. It's long
overdue.
However, a lot of us believe it should be left off by default.
Home users rarely need it, and businesses usually modify core
OS settings before deployment. So by default it should be off.
Like any rarely used service should be.
This is why Windows users have so many problems. There's a
ton of features most of which are on by default. Half of the older
viruses relied on never-used network features which were on by
default.
From microsoft's standpoint it's just easier for them to turn
everything on. It's less support calls because they didn't know
they had to turn on DCOM or some other setting.
However, a lot of us believe it should be left off by default.
Home users rarely need it, and businesses usually modify core
OS settings before deployment. So by default it should be off.
Like any rarely used service should be.
This is why Windows users have so many problems. There's a
ton of features most of which are on by default. Half of the older
viruses relied on never-used network features which were on by
default.
From microsoft's standpoint it's just easier for them to turn
everything on. It's less support calls because they didn't know
they had to turn on DCOM or some other setting.
Unlike Windows XP, IPv6 in Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn cannot be uninstalled. To disable IPv6 on a specific connection, you can do the following:
" In the Network Connections folder, obtain properties of the connection and clear the check box next to the Internet Protocol version 6 (TCP/IPv6) component in the list under This connection uses the following items. This method disables IPv6 on your LAN interfaces and connections, but does not disable IPv6 on tunnel interfaces or the IPv6 loopback interface.
There are also instructions on how to change the behaviors of it via the registry including as stated above, to check ipv4 before ipv6.
Next time you find your inbox filled with spam, just remember that most of it comes from bot nets, and quite a bit of that comes from raw socket exploits.
*most* people won't be supplied with a valid routable IPv6 address
because they won't be attached to an IPv6 network or have access
to an IPv6 DHCP server.
Neither is anyone with a business configured with most current NAT schemes.
I just don't see where all this extra traffic is coming from. Grandma who buys a Vista PC and hooks it directly to the internet with no firewall.
And even then, does her ISP give her an IPv6 address (or pass it along)? Again, it's questionable where all this traffic is coming from.
then people have to purchase hundreds of thousands of copies.
We've been promised Vista for over 5 years and still can't buy it.
And I doubt if many will in the next couple of years.
There's plent of time to work on DNS.
"if Vista was all of a sudden deployed everywhere, we'd be having rolling blackouts"
Yeah sure, but that just isn't going to happen in a world where people are still running W95 & W98.
What Mockapetris is saying is that DNS servers at the carriers and major ISPs are running at capacity.
Granted Mockapetris is selling industrial strength domain servers suitable for large ISPs and phone companies. Surprise a self serving statement on the internet. I am shocked shocked! (There seems to be gambling going on as well!)
The internet is still growing at a terrible rate even though it is so huge we dont see it as dramatically.
It took a looooong time for CNET to come up. The stall was most likely due to a slow DNS response as I know I have a fast pipe.
CNET wrote the story so as to make it seem to be Microsofts fault that DNS systems are at capacity. The issue isnt whether adding IPv6 will double DNS queries or just raise them slightly. Mockapetris is saying any increase in DNS load will push things over the edge unless capacity at the server end is increased.
Nobody writing the story interviewed a carrier or large ISP and asked how loaded their DNS servers are. Nobody did any measurements on DNS response times. All I saw was dumb statements from PR types who didnt have a clue what the question was about.
Microsoft ought to know better. They have a fewcompetent people. The PR people should have found one of them before responding.
Im sure Mockapetris is delighted that Vista will increase load for DNS. We'd all like to see the problem fixed before net response times get any slower.
Its unlikely DNS had anything to do with that. CNET is usually one of the slower 'news' sites. Is google coming up just as slow?
The slowness you are experiencing could be anything, could be a switch at your ISP overloading, could be the web server at cnet's facility overloading. When it comes to the internet, DNS is the least likely cause of 'slowness'
"Representatives for Comcast, Verizon Communications and EarthLink, all companies with a high-speed Internet access business, were not available to comment on this story."
Even better, there's really no decent technical backgrounder on the issue, so readers who don't really understand the underlying factors get a really skewed and inaccurate perspective on what's going on. I wish CNET would focus more on the technical and less on the sensational.
The Vistapocalypse Cometh
Robert
There is one good reason as to why this story is BS. The default option in Vista RC1 is to "Obtain DNS server address automatically". If your ISP doesn't support IPv6 DNS lookup (which can be the case, regardless of whether or not you have an IPv6 address) then you have NO ABILITY TO PERFORM AN IPv6 DNS LOOKUP. This is true even if you have the IPv6 protocol installed and applied to a network connection.
As a secondary point, DNS lookups are cached. You'd have to request a different webSITE every single time to force a DNS lookup (within the cache window, which depends on the software), let alone two!!! each time. And ISPs are not stupid either, do you think that Comcast's DNS server goes out to the DNS Root server everytime one of its millions of customers tries to go to yahoo.com? If you do, you are nuts! They cache as well.
Even in a old 56kb modem connection you don't need to worry about dns bandwith.
Also yes DNS queries are cached... but you ought to do some real world testing and see how much DNS query traffic actually comes out of your computer to your ISP. You must not do much when you surf besides always going to yahoo.com. Lot's of people go to lots of other sites... I go to dozens of different sites per day myself. Also there are lots of sub sites on yahoo and google and such. Examples: images.google.com, groups.google.com. Everyone is not going to these all of the time. But I click on them pretty often. Do a search engine search for something and you can't tell me cache is going to predict what results users are going to click on (what web site name) requiring a DNS lookup.
The only things that are going to affect this issue are: 1.) What MS Does in Vista to stop v6 lookups when there is no V6 connection, and 2.) What the root servers do (or have already done) to handle additional traffic.
Whether they will cause a blackout or brownout is yet to be seen. Personally, I doubt it unless they do unnecessary queries instead of caching. But if they're low on memory... then will they increase their DNS lookups?
It takes a whole lot of DNS requests to bog down a DNS server. But even if it doesn't take down a DNS server, it will increase used bandwidth both locally and across the internet to your ISP's DNS.
Microsoft... as well as everybody/anybody else... needs to start making their protocols and software using the current protocols more network friendly!
Walt
This is a sensationalized story pushed by a company that stands to profit from the upgrades to DNS servers.
As stated in earlier comments, and somewhat in the article. The only problem that would come from this is from individual ISPs. If their DNS servers are near capacity and everybody using those servers where to switch to Vista then maybe, just maybe it could overload ther server.