DNS Fool

The initial patches provided for better port randomization in BIND caused it to experience performance issues.  Today ISC has provided a second patch for each of the Unix versions of 9.3.5, 9.4.2, and 9.5.0 that addresses the problems introduced in the first patch.  As stated in the release notes, this update provides:

• performance improvement over the P1 releases, namely
  • significantly remedying the port allocation issues
  • allowing TCP queries and zone transfers while issuing as many
    outstanding UDP queries as possible
  • additional security of port randomization at the same level as P1

Additionally, the patch for 9.5.0 includes “fixes for several bugs in the 9.5.0 base code.”

Those using BIND for Windows will need to wait a little longer for the performance fixes as these patches do not fix the issues on that platform.

The updated versions can be downloaded directly from the BIND page on the ISC website.