Monitoring is a fundamental component for building observable IT infrastructure and applications, no matter how your services are structured. By adding a domain to a DNS (domain name system) provider’s name servers, you’re defining those servers as authoritative for any queries coming into your domain. DNS is a crucial aspect of network performance and can show the responsiveness between authoritative name servers and recursive name servers (essentially end-users). And, as the first touchpoint between end-users and your services, you need to ensure the uptime and performance of DNS.

What is DNS monitoring?

Because computers can only connect and interpret a series of numbers, the domain name system (DNS) was created as a directory for translating domains from the browser into computer-readable IP. In the early days of the internet, you could only visit a website by knowing its specific IP address. According to DNS Made Easy, DNS was created in the early 1980s by a man named Paul Mockapetris as a way to map IP addresses to human-readable domain names.

DNS Lookup whatsmydns.net DNS Lookup tool lets you query DNS servers and get instant results. You can perform a DNS lookup to do a quick DNS check for all of the most common DNS record types from a selection of DNS servers for any domain name. Looking for easier to understand results? Global DNS Propagation Checker NslookupTool.com lets you instantly perform a DNS lookup to check a domain names current IP address and DNS record information against multiple name servers located in different parts of the world. This allows you to check the current state of DNS propagation after having made changes to your domains records.

As you likely already know, DNS records are stored on nameservers. Nameservers are used to store computer files that map domains to specific IP addresses. Root nameservers are distributed across the globe and store the locations of all top-level domains (TLDs) such as .com or .org. Then, those TLDs each have their own set of servers that store the records showing who is accountable for storing the DNS records of a specific domain.

The authoritative, accountable nameserver is typically a DNS provider or registrar such as GoDaddy, Name.com, AWS, etc. – depending on the type of service you maintain. Monitoring the performance and uptime of DNS can help you detect problems in the network and ensure that you’re consistently delivering services to end-users. But, to comprehensively monitor DNS, you’ll need a suite of monitoring tools that help you ensure full coverage of all potential DNS incidents.

So, we put together this list of the top 10 DNS monitoring tools to help you build visibility into the health of your DNS:

The top 10 DNS monitoring tools and software

DNS Propagation Check Provides free dns lookup service for checking domain name server records against a randomly selected list of DNS servers in different corners of the world. Find out when we release new features and tools Includes news from DNSPerf and CDNPerf. We rarely send messages, only when we have important news to share. To create a DNS Group, click on the “+” icon next to the “Default DNS List,” type a name and press “Enter.” So, if you are looking for a fully featured DNS benchmark tool which does more the benchmarking different DNS servers then DNS Jumper is for you. Being a free software, give it a try and see if it fits your needs.

1) DNS Check

DNS Check is a simple tool to ensure you notice any changes or lookup failures for DNS records and name servers. You can link DNS Check with alerting and incident response tools to immediately notify on-call responders when there’s a critical issue. DevOps and IT teams can run automatic checks for unresponsive name servers, wrong IP addresses, missing or duplicate DNS records, IP addresses that have been removed, out of sync name servers and much more. You can request DNS record updates on demand and see which are working and which aren’t. DNS Check is an excellent, simple way to keep track of DNS uptime and performance.

2) SignalFX

SignalFX is more commonly used as an application monitoring or cloud monitoring tool. But, it does have functionality for DNS monitoring when you’re working with numerous AWS capabilities such as Route 53, Apache, EC2, etc. SignalFX also makes it easy to expand from your DNS monitoring in order to monitor other parts of your networks, applications and infrastructure.

3) Catchpoint

Catchpoint provides application and server monitoring from front to back. Catchpoint’s DNS monitoring solution can help teams monitor the real impact of DNS on end-user experience. Across all servers and networks, Catchpoint allows you to see if DNS servers are up and running, as well as how well they’re performing. In addition to the deep context provided by Catchpoint’s DNS monitoring tool, they have a number of additional synthetic and real-user monitoring offerings to help you create visibility into overall system health. Catchpoint also integrates with alerting tools like VictorOps to help DevOps and IT teams reduce MTTA/MTTR for DNS issues.

4) Site24x7

As another great DNS and server monitoring tool, Site24x7 can help DevOps and IT professionals continuously check the availability and response time of DNS. In one tool, you can visualize and check on the performance of DNS and troubleshoot the issue – leading to a faster resolution for domain name incidents. You can find mismatched record names and configured search values, set response time thresholds and alert on-call responders when incidents do occur. While Site24x7 may not help you address all of your website and uptime monitoring needs, it does DNS monitoring very well.

5) Splunk

Splunk is a leader in logging, data analytics and application and infrastructure monitoring. DNS monitoring is a secondary part of the services provided by Splunk. But, in conjunction with the other monitoring solutions provided by Splunk, you can build deep observability across all network, server and application issues. Additionally, with VictorOps as part of the Splunk family, you can count on your monitoring tools working well with your on-call management and real-time incident response solutions.

6) Nagios XI

One small part of Nagios XI is DNS monitoring. It can act as a complete solution for monitoring DNS servers, protocols and queries. Nagios XI allows you to increase the availability of servers, DNS, and overall services and applications. With faster detection of network outages and protocol failures, as well as faster detection of DNS hijacking and spoofing, you’ll be able to respond faster. Alongside a well-built incident response plan, Nagios XI can help you improve overall service uptime and ensure DNS issues are resolved quickly.

7) Panopta

Panopta is an excellent client-side infrastructure monitoring tool for cloud, on-premise and hybrid environments. You can monitor DNS as well as everything from CPU usage to latency across servers and networks. Alongside application monitoring tools and alerting software, you have a recipe for DevOps and IT success. Armed with the knowledge of DNS availability as well as overall performance and health of servers and networks, you can build an engineering department dedicated to proactive reliability.

8) Dotcom-Monitor

Alongside web monitoring metrics and uptime checks for things such as HTTP/S requests and SSL certificates, Dotcom-Monitor can consistently check the performance and correctness of worldwide DNS queries. This ensures consistent connectivity between websites and servers, as well as ensuring positive end-user experiences with your application or service. DNS monitoring with Dotcom-Monitor can help DevOps and IT teams decrease downtime, increase revenue and improve customer relationships.

9) PRTG

PRTG is highly-specific to teams looking to know everything about DNS. It can provide comprehensive statistics on DNS servers and will constantly run availability and performance checks on those same DNS servers. PRTG is easy to set up and offers detailed insights that on-call IT and DevOps teams need when responding to critical network or server incidents regarding DNS. You can easily set up notifications to be sent out through on-call tools such as VictorOps in the event of DNS malfunctions or server downtime.

10) Monitis

Monitis’ DNS monitoring can show you whether or not your DNS server correctly resolves the URL that you’ve provided to expected IPs. Monitis can alert you if the DNS monitor fails to connect to the server, fails to resolve an expect IP, runs into some kind of permissions error, or simply runs into connection errors or overall response time errors. Monitis is a truly comprehensive DNS monitoring tool. And, Monitis’ insights, when surfaced in a highly collaborative incident management tool, can lead to faster incident resolution and greater visibility into DNS health for all engineering and IT teammates.

Improving DNS performance and reducing MTTA/MTTR with monitoring

In the grand scheme of things, DNS is one small part of a service’s overall network and server health. But, in the land of highly interconnected applications and complex infrastructure, one small issue with DNS can create numerous other incidents. So, knowing exactly what’s going on with your DNS can help you facilitate a stronger foundation for system reliability. Then, with a detection plan in place for DNS issues, you can build a strategic, associated plan for on-call scheduling, automated alerting and collaborative incident response.

See how VictorOps integrates with the full suite of DevOps and IT tools – from monitoring software to chat applications – to improve incident visibility and make on-call incident management suck less. Sign up for a 14-day free trial or request a free personalized demo to learn more.

A unique, comprehensive, accurate & free Windows (and Linux/Wine) utility to determine the exact performance of local and remote DNS nameservers . . .

“You can't optimize it until you can measure it”
Now you CAN measure it!

Click here or on the image above to download this 147 KByte program.

Although GRC's DNS Benchmark is packed with features to satisfy the needs of the most demanding Internet gurus (and this benchmark offers features designed to enable serious DNS performance investigation), the box below demonstrates that it is also extremely easy for casual and first-time users to run:

Links to further descriptive help, FAQ pages and resources for this benchmark
utility are located at the bottom of each page. An overview and list of the
unique features of GRC's DNS Benchmark utility are provided below.

People use alphabetic domain names (www.grc.com), but Internet data packets require numerical Internet IP addresses (4.79.142.202). So the first step required before anything can be done on the Internet is to lookup the site's or service's domain name to determine its associated Internet IP address.

Since nothing can happen until IP addresses are known, the use of slow, overloaded or unreliable DNS servers will get in the way, noticeably slowing down virtually all of your use of the Internet.

Unless you have taken over manual control of the DNS servers your system is using (which, as you'll see, is not difficult to do), your system will be using the DNS servers that were automatically assigned by your Internet connection provider (your ISP). Since they are likely located close to you on the Internet (since they are provided by your own ISP) they may already be the fastest DNS servers available to you. But they might be in the wrong order (the second one being faster than the first one, and that matters) or, who knows? Many people have discovered that their own ISP's DNS servers are slower than other publicly available alternatives on the Internet, which are faster and/or more reliable.

This DNS Benchmark will give you visibility into what's going on with your system's currently assigned DNS servers by automatically comparing their performance with many well known publicly available alternatives.

GRC's DNS Benchmark performs a detailed analysis and comparison of the operational performance and reliability of any set of up to 200 DNS nameservers (sometimes also called resolvers) at once. When the Benchmark is started in its default configuration, it identifies all DNS nameservers the user's system is currently configured to use and adds them to its built-in list of publicly available “alternative” nameservers. Each DNS nameserver in the benchmark list is carefully “characterized” to determine its suitability — to you — for your use as a DNS resolver. This characterization includes testing each nameserver for its “redirection” behavior: whether it returns an error for a bad domain request, or redirects a user's web browser to a commercial marketing-oriented page. While such behavior may be acceptable to some users, others may find this objectionable.

When the benchmark is run, the performance and apparent reliability of the DNS nameservers the system is currently using, plus all of the working nameservers on the Benchmark's built-in list of alternative nameservers are compared with each other.

Results are continuously displayed and updated while the benchmark is underway, with a dynamically sorted and scaled bar chart, and a tabular chart display showing the cached, uncached and “dotcom” DNS lookup performance of each nameserver. These values are determined by carefully querying each nameserver for the IP addresses of the top 50 most popular domain names on the Internet and also by querying for nonexistent domains.

Once the benchmark finishes, the results are heuristically and statistically analyzed to present a comprehensive yet simplified and understandable English-language summary of all important findings and conclusions. Based upon these results, users may choose to change the usage order of their system's own resolvers, or, if alternative public nameservers offer superior performance or features compared with the nameservers currently being used, to switch to one or more alternative nameservers.

• Compatible with all versions of Windows from Windows 95 through Windows 7.
• Compatible with Wine (Windows emulation) running on Linux and Macintosh.
• Hand-coded in 100% pure assembly language for highest precision and smallest size: 147 KBytes.
• Installation-free — nothing to install — just run the small executable file.
  (Won't change anything or mess up your system.)
• Lightweight (single packet), optional automatic and/or manual version checking.
• Task Scheduler-compatible for non-UI non-interactive background operation.
• Optional, automatic results logging for fully unattended operation.
• Comprehensive error return codes to support full automation.

Dns Lookup By Ip Address

• For each of up to 200 DNS nameservers, using the Internet's most popular top-50 domain names, independently measures, charts, statistically analyzes, reports (and optionally exports):
  • Cached lookups – the time to return a domain name that is already in the resolver's name cache.
  • Uncached lookups – the time to return a sub-domain name that is not already in the resolver's name cache.
  • Dotcom lookups – the time to consult the nameserver's chosen dotcom resolver(s) for a dotcom name.
  • Reliability – the number of queries not replied to (lost) during the benchmark.
  • Rebinding protection – whether the resolver blocks non-routable private IP addresses.
• Optionally verifies whether nameservers provide DNS security (DNSSEC) record authentication.
• When using a list of (provided) DNSSEC-signed domains, benchmarks DNSSEC authentication performance.
• Graphs and compares all four benchmark parameters with an easy-to-read bar chart.
• Builds a customized list of the fastest performing (for you) top 50 resolvers, located anywhere in the world, selected from a master list of more than 4,800 possible known resolvers.
• On-the-fly hierarchical sorting of performance results by cached (default) or uncached performance.
  (Sorting is “hierarchical” because cached (or uncached) performance is sorted first, followed by uncached (or cached), then by dotcom last.)
• Auto-scaled bar chart that can be manually overridden for chart-to-chart comparison.
• Pop-up value “inspector” (left click in nameserver list) displays precise values on bar chart.
• Detailed tabular results report.
• Fully detailed, locale-aware (internationalized), CSV results export.
• Automatic logging to a CSV file for long-term background results monitoring and collection.
• Simultaneously compares the performance and reliability of up to 200 DNS nameservers.
• Determines network name (reverse DNS), ownership, and operational status for each nameserver.
• Determines whether nameservers intercept and redirect bad domain names.
• Comprehensive, heuristic “Conclusions” generation summarizes all results and suggests useful system changes, if any, in easily readable English.
• All results are analyzed for statistical significance with a 95% confidence threshold.
• Bottom of tabular data page contains built-in quick-reference “reminder” help.

How To Check Dns Settings

• The built-in top-50 domains list is user-replaceable to allow more/less statistical significance, and for support of DNSSEC record authentication.
• .INI files containing sets and subsets of nameservers to benchmark can be added, removed, and saved.
• Special “dnsbench.ini” file is auto-loaded, if present, to always override built-in nameserver list.
  (This supports the use of customizable personal nameserver lists for special applications.)
• At start-up, tests for the presence of, and deliberately “triggers”, any outbound-blocking personal firewalls to allow Internet access exceptions to be provided before testing begins.
• Internet connectivity aware – verifies unimpeded Internet connectivity before testing and gracefully handles possible loss of Internet connectivity during testing.
• Bar chart results can be copied to the system clipboard or saved in BMP or compressed PNG format for storage or sharing.
• Built-in self-screen capture to BMP or compressed PNG file.
• All benchmark pages and tabs can be copied to the system clipboard or saved to files as text, rich-text, or images as appropriate.

Check Dns Records Online

The best way to familiarize yourself with the DNS Benchmark's operation is to download a copy to your computer. Note that it's not very large (only 147 KB) so it won't take long. And also note that there's nothing to “install” — you just run the executable file. So fire it up and poke around at its many features.

Dns Check Tool

The “Features / Operations Walkthrough” page provides a visual quick-reference guide to the program. You are invited to refer to that page while exploring the program, or check-out the Features / Operations Walkthrough page first.