In rDNS We Trust
Revisiting a Common Data-Source’s Reliability
Tobias Fiebig (Technical University of Berlin, TU Delft - Information and Communication Technology, University of California)
Kevin Borgolte (University of California)
Shuang Hao (University of Texas at Dallas)
Christopher Kruegel (University of California)
Giovanni Vigna (University of California)
Anja Feldmann (Technical University of Berlin, Max Planck Institut für Informatik)
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Abstract
Reverse DNS (rDNS) is regularly used as a data source in Internet measurement research. However, existing work is polarized on its reliability, and new techniques to collect active IPv6 datasets have not yet been sufficiently evaluated. In this paper, we investigate active and passive data collection and practical use aspects of rDNS datasets.We observe that the share of non-authoritatively answerable IPv4 rDNS queries reduced since earlier studies and IPv6 rDNS has less non-authoritatively answerable queries than IPv4 rDNS. Furthermore, we compare passively collected datasets with actively collected ones, and we show that they enable observing the same effects in rDNS data. While highlighting opportunities for future research, we find no immediate challenges to the use of rDNS as active and passive data-source for Internet measurement research.