Bind performance as caching nameserver

[Ulrich David]

Hi,

I'm testing some configuration for my caching name server with Bind  
9.4.2-P2 using resperf. The server is a dual Core Xeon at 2,3GHz 2GB  
Ram runing gentoo linux. The goal is to have maximum performance from  
this box.

The problem is I don't know which performance I can expect of, in term  
of latency and in term of response per second (without or with loss).

Here is my results :
Statistics:

   Queries sent:         187367
   Queries completed:    136574
   Queries lost:         50793
   Ran for:              54.994721 seconds
   Maximum throughput:   15492.000000 qps
   Lost at that point:   9.31%

# time target_qps actual_qps responses_per_sec failures_per_sec  
avg_latency
   0.250   416.67   416.00   416.00     2.00 0.007470
   0.750  1250.00  1250.00  1250.00    18.00 0.010431
   1.250  2083.33  2082.00  2082.00    40.00 0.004323
   1.750  2916.67  2918.00  2918.00   290.00 0.186844
   2.250  3750.00  3750.00  3750.00  2186.00 2.234745
   2.750  4583.33  4582.00  4582.00  1668.00 2.879924
   3.250  5416.67  5418.00  5418.00  1260.00 1.817618
   3.750  6250.00  6250.00  6250.00  2864.00 4.013023
   4.250  7083.33  7082.00  7082.00  1760.00 1.853761
   4.750  7916.67  7918.00  7918.00  2450.00 2.763024
   5.250  8750.00  8750.00  8750.00  4146.00 3.793698
   5.750  9583.33  9582.00  9582.00  3522.00 2.775299
   6.250 10416.67 10418.00 10418.00  3796.00 2.814351
   6.750 11250.00 11250.00 11250.00  4872.00 3.234263
   7.250 12083.33 12082.00 12082.00  4454.00 2.876617
   7.750 12916.67 12918.00 12918.00  6312.00 3.520631
   8.250 13750.00 13750.00 13750.00  6200.00 3.318447
   8.750 14583.33 14582.00 14582.00  4192.00 2.017755
   9.250 15416.67 15418.00 15418.00  4278.00 1.928234
   9.750 16250.00 16250.00 13854.00  4998.00 2.440862
  10.250 17083.33 17082.00 15492.00  6544.00 2.837576
  10.750 17916.67 17918.00 12032.00  4430.00 2.467845
  11.250 18750.00 18750.00 13120.00  4354.00 2.217802
  11.750 19583.33 19582.00 15038.00  4810.00 2.081687
  12.250 20416.67 20418.00 10182.00  3070.00 1.983601
  12.750 21250.00 21250.00  8074.00  2832.00 2.224380
  13.250 22083.33 22082.00  9254.00  2834.00 1.906686
  13.750 22916.67 22918.00  8896.00  2326.00 1.752326
  14.250 23750.00 23750.00  8964.00  2992.00 2.003389

I'm quite surprised by the failures and by the average latency for  
more than 1500 qps...

Are these results realistic for this hardware configuration or have I  
miss something in my config file?

query logging is OFF and my options are :
options {
	directory "/var/bind";
	pid-file "/var/run/named/named.pid";
	statistics-file "/var/bind/stats/named.stats";

	listen-on-v6 { none; };
         listen-on { myself; };

	version	"None of your business";
	allow-query { trusted_network; };
	blackhole { blacklist; };
	max-cache-size 0;
	recursive-clients 1500;
};