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From: swatt@NOC.NET.YALE.EDU (Alan S. Watt)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: Monitoring your nameserver
Message-ID: <9008171554.AA08895@noc.net.yale.edu>
Date: 17 Aug 90 15:54:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26


It seems obvious the only meaningful way to monitor a nameserver is
toss requests at it and check the results.  The Internet Rover package
you can get free from Merit has code to do this.  You can also
use or perhaps modify dig (Domain Internet Groper) to the same end.

I have Rover running to monitor all the campus nameservers.  Every
few minutes or so it will hit them with a "1.0.0.127.in-addr.arpa"
lookup request.  This of course doesn't tell you everything is working
properly, but if a nameserver can't manage this much, it's time to
look at it.

So far, I haven't seen any nameserver failures which can still
pass this test.

	- Alan S. Watt
	  High Speed Networking, Yale University
	  Computing and Information Systems
	  Box 2112 Yale Station
	  New Haven, CT  06520-2112
	  (203) 432-6600 X394
	  Watt-Alan@Yale.Edu


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