Re: RR distribution by type?

[Peter Koch <[e-mail]>]

> Has anybody ever done or seen a (recent) survey of how various RR types are
> distributed "in the wild" in real-world zones?  Ideally, I'd be interested

Here's an excerpt of what was discovered during the latest RIPE DNS hostcount
<http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/stats/hostcount/> for the TLD DE
<http://www.TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE/~pk/dns/hostcount/latest.html>.

	38506954 total
	13173185 A
	11301138 NS
	 7970557 MX
	 4916802 SOA
	  829975 CNAME
	  202454 HINFO
	   90459 TXT
	    9544 PTR
	    4101 SRV
	    2465 WKS
	    2456 RP
	    1105 AAAA
	    1037 MB
	     943 MR
	     621 LOC
	      50 A6
	      23 KEY
	      18 MINFO
	      17 AFSDB
	       2 NSAP
	       2 MG

The figures for A, NS and SOA are off by a factor of two (see ref'd document
for an explanation). Some observations:

o HINFO is rather popular

o PTR RRs are due to RFC1101 and classless delegation (RFC2317) pointing
  into the "forward" zone

o SRV is still rather low, but the survey only covers some 80 % (== 2.45
  million) of the zones and only sees the externally visible part of the
  namespace

o Given the distribution of AAAA and A6 - does this call for combined
  operations?

Finally, the question whether a certain RR type is "used" remains unanswered
for most of them, because you'd have to take into account both zone population
and query patterns.

-Peter