defining service ceilings

[Tim Peiffer]

Are there any BCP documents that cover methodologies for measuring or 
defining the maximum number of queries that a DNS server is capable 
of?    Are there any defined test suites that we should be running?  I 
am looking for documentation that would help validate the testing that 
we have already done.

Example:
We recently installed new hardware that replaced our authoritative 
nameservers.  The hardware used to be run on FreeBSD 4.X, and Bind 8.X.  
Daily  query averages are running approximately 600 qps total across all 
of the servers.  After replacing the hardware with Sun V60 and RedHat 
AS,  we were able to create a query source file and use the queryperf 
utility, we were able to establish a service ceiling of approximately 
5500qps.

Tim Peiffer
Networking and Telecommunications Services.
University of Minnesota