bind/os benchmarking tool

[jacob at freecommunity.com]

I would like to run a comparitive test between bind on freebsd and
bind on linux.  I've searched for dns benchmarking tools and havent
found any.

I realize there are many environmental factors that affect bind's
performance and that any benchmarking tool I could write would not
adequately describe 95% of the real nameservers in operation.  What I 
am looking to establish is whether or not I can validate the opinion 
that BSD-derived kernels have a "better" ip stack and that they 
handle high load (a very general term I realize) better than other 
kernels.

I have to decide between BSD and linux for this setup and I would like
to know if there is a glaring difference between the two.  At this
point I don't know.

First thought would be a perl script to generate a large number of
dummy zonefiles with a large number of records in them.  Then a
threaded perl script to make a bunch of random requests at specified
rates, calculating average response time at various load levels.

You could turn up the volume of requests over time and see how things
change.  If all other things are equal (same hardware, no other
software runnning) it seems to me this would reveal if there was a big
difference between the two.

Does this sound reasonable?  Are there already tools available that
I just haven't found that can do this?

Thanks!

jacob martinson