Other DNS software
This is a list of some other DNS software out there. Note that a
more detailed comparison between MaraDNS and the more notable projects
listed here is available in the advocacy document.
Freely downloadable DNS servers
Caching DNS servers
- BIND 9 is
a complete rewrite of BIND, and, as such, probably does not have the
security issues that previous versions of BIND has. In fact, one of the
BIND developers found a security problem in earlier versions of MaraDNS.
Very full-featured, and is the reference standard for the newer DNS RFCs.
- PowerDNS is an authoritative
and recursive
DNS server with support for, among other things, SQL. I would like to
applaud the PowerDNS developers for making a libre release of this
software.
- Unbound is a recursive-only DNS
server.
- DnsMasq
is a non-recursive caching DNS server.
- My own Deadwood project
is another non-recursive caching DNS server.
- DjbDNS DJ Bernstein's DNS
package, which has both an authoritative DNS server and a caching
nameserver. It is now public domain software, no longer under
a restrictive license. I don't like DjbDNS myself: It's out of
date and no one has bothered to make a currently maintained fork of it.
- pdnsd is a
recursive caching DNS server. Paul Rombouts is (was?) the current
maintainer of this program.
- Posadis is another DNS
server project, similiar to MaraDNS. This server is now both
a resolving and an authoritative DNS server. Hasn't been updated in
a while.
Non-recursive DNS servers
- NSD is an authoritative-only
DNS server which is compatible with BIND zone files.
- MyDNS is an authoritative-only
DNS server which uses MySQL as a database back end. The most currently
updated version appears to be MyDNS-ng, the "next generation" version of MyDNS.
- SDNS is a project
written in the late 1990s by Sandia Labs. Like MaraDNS, this project
was written with security in mind. Since this is a government
project, the code is public domain. The program does not seem to be
downloadable anywhere, so I am mirroring it here. I would like to thank
Fred Cohen for informing me about this package.
- The Pliant language/package
comes with a
DNS server. This DNS server can not recursively process DNS queries
given a list of root servers.
- Twisted includes a
non-recursive DNS server.
- DnsJAVA is an authoritative-only
DNS server written in Java.
- The Eddit project includes a
DNS server
- SheerDNS is a
simple non-caching DNS server that stores all records as their
own files.
Abandoned DNS server projects
These are DNS server projects which have not released any files for a
significant period of time, and are not fully functioning DNS servers
(either because the program did not have basic DNS functionality when
abandoned, the program was not documented before being abandoned, or
because the program was abandoned so long ago that it is not fully
functional on today's internet).
Other
Proprietary DNS solutions
No, I have not listed every single DNS server that exists here.
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