Hurricane Electric's IPv6 Tunnel Broker Forums

HE.NET Network Tools Mobile App => General Questions & Suggestions => Topic started by: tuxthemadpenguin on June 15, 2017, 05:05:55 PM

Title: DNS types
Post by: tuxthemadpenguin on June 15, 2017, 05:05:55 PM
I'm a big fan of this app after going through many, many apps looking for some good output.  I really just wanted the power of dig on my iPhone.

I do keep other DNS apps on the phone because the DNS types I can search for is oddly limited(no CNAME?).   Can we have a write in/other type?  If not can you add axfr,cname, and caa?
Title: Re: DNS types
Post by: snarked on June 15, 2017, 10:32:59 PM
Actually, any DNS lookup software should also accept numeric types so that new entries can be looked up prior to full support for them.
Title: Re: DNS types
Post by: divad27182 on June 17, 2017, 02:50:13 PM
Quote from: snarked on June 15, 2017, 10:32:59 PM
Actually, any DNS lookup software should also accept numeric types so that new entries can be looked up prior to full support for them.
Wouldn't work.  The necessary part is decoding the reply.  An unknown type could only be reported as hex bytes or just "undecodable".  This is the same reason unknown types can't even be forwarded by caching server or slave server.  I suspect this is why many new things are encoded in TXT fields.

Of course, a DNS lookup software should support "ANY".  (Maybe I should make a DNS server that returns weird or random data, just to see what the clients make of it. ;))
Title: Re: DNS types
Post by: snarked on June 19, 2017, 10:56:16 PM
But with numeric input, at least you get an output.....
Title: Re: DNS types
Post by: divad27182 on June 20, 2017, 07:43:49 AM
Quote from: snarked on June 19, 2017, 10:56:16 PM
But with numeric input, at least you get an output.....

The output could only be "Unknown record of type n with undecodable content".  The content bytes could be output, but domain names would often be undecipherable due to trailing domain compression.  OK, there might be some value to showing the unknown records. 

Note that you really are better off with an ANY query to fetch this.  (Frankly, if you are trying to browse DNS, I would always recommend "ANY", except if you are trying to deal with a partially expired cache.)