Geekfindr: DNSstuff/IPtools
It is on reasonable occasion that I find it necessary to figure out what’s going on with a domain or IP Address - typically this involves dig (ok, I’ll admit it, I still use nslookup…), traceroute, whois or ping. Usually when that becomes necessary, it’s also interesting or necessary to be able to perform those from a few different spots on the net. Since a lot of my servers are all on the same subnet, sometimes that can be unsatisfying. Fortunately, i recently discovered the DNSstuff website.
This site has an array of tools, pretty much anything you could want to do with a domain name or ip address is at your fingertips in a quick and easy form. All the things I mention above are just the beginning and will provide ping/traceroute information from a server well outside anything I have access to, so it’s a great impartial third party. It’s also a really cool tool that shows you the cached status of a domain at many major isp’s around the world - this is really useful if you’re doing any sort of DNS move to watch propagation of your changes. Another pretty cool one is the time to lookup various dns records - you can see if there are any performance issues with your dns hosting. Beware, watching this too much may drive you to NeuStar Ultra DNS.
There’s actually a for pay set of tools in addition to the free ones (which eventually require free registration), but I haven’t really explored those at all. Some of those features do look compelling though and I’m thinking about shelling out the whopping $3/mo to look at some of the new features - none of them are things you can’t get on your own like the Zone File Dump, but it’s nice that there’s a single place to \\ easily get all these things w/out any fuss and $3/mo is almost a non-price - it it saves you 3 minutes a month it pretty much pays for itself.
Anyhow, it’s a pretty slick site with some hot DNS action. If you’re opposed to any sort of registration there’s a very similar site iptools.com which is all free. It has a lot of the same features, but is a little rougher around the edges and the cached DNS tool is much less useful. If you ever work in DNS it’s worth a couple minutes of your time to check out DNSstuff.
March 26th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
If you like the `dig`, there is an online dig clone on the web at http://www.kloth.net/services/dig.php
which even has the `trace` flag.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Thanks for mentioning us in your blog! We just put ‘it’s a pretty slick site with some hot DNS action’ up on our white board as our quote of the day, ha ha.
Next week we’re launching a new reskin of the site - should make heavy users happy as well as orient new users better to the stuff available.
Any new tools or services that would be useful to you?
Thanks,
Andrea
DNSstuff
June 19th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I’m glad to be quoted! :) My dns needs are pretty unimaginative so the site you have now more than satifies my DNS urges. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the new skin, though!
June 24th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Was reading through your blog, and thought i’d notify you of an Australian web tools / dns tools website that i use at home/work. its http://w3dt.net/
Not as fast as dnsstuff for some sites.. i imagine its cause its in Australia, but it works great, is clean simple to use and there are loads of tools to choose from.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:13 am
neddy, thanks. The site is pretty good, interesting tools. But even more useful is the ability to run all those tools from Australia! Definitely a view of the internet worth having.