research-article

Clouding up the Internet: how centralized is DNS traffic becoming?

Authors:

Giovane C. M. Moura,

Sebastian Castro,

Maarten Wullink, and

Cristian HesselmanAuthors Info & Claims

IMC '20: Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference

October 2020

Pages 42 - 49

https://doi.org/10.1145/3419394.3423625

Published: 27 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Concern has been mounting about Internet centralization over the few last years -- consolidation of traffic/users/infrastructure into the hands of a few market players. We measure DNS and computing centralization by analyzing DNS traffic collected at a DNS root server and two country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) -- one in Europe and the other in Oceania -- and show evidence of concentration. More than 30% of all queries to both ccTLDs are sent from 5 large cloud providers. We compare the clouds resolver infrastructure and highlight a discrepancy in behavior: some cloud providers heavily employ IPv6, DNSSEC, and DNS over TCP, while others simply use unsecured DNS over UDP over IPv4. We show one positive side to centralization: once a cloud provider deploys a security feature -- such as QNAME minimization -- it quickly benefits a large number of users.

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cover image ACM Conferences

IMC '20: Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference

October 2020

751 pages

ISBN:9781450381383

DOI:10.1145/3419394

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

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Published: 27 October 2020

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639041
Silva MFranco MScheid EZembruzki LGranville L(2024)PerfResolv: A Geo-Distributed Approach for Performance Analysis of Public DNS Resolvers Based on Domain PopularityAdvanced Information Networking and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-57853-3_4(35-47)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57853-3_4
Hilton ADeccio CDavis JCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)Fourteen years in the lifeProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620415(3171-3186)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620415
Nisenoff ASharma RFeamster NCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)User awareness and behaviors concerning encrypted DNS settings in web browsersProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620412(3117-3133)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
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Zhang FZhang YLiu BAlowaisheq EYing LLi XZhang ZLiu YDuan HZhang MMontpetit MLeivadeas AUhlig SJaved M(2023)Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Evaluating Security Risks of the Undelegated Record on DNS Hosting ServicesProceedings of the 2023 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3618257.3624839(188-197)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2023
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