From req/res to pub/sub: Exploring Media over QUIC Transport for DNS

2025-10-30

AI Summary

Traditional DNS operates on a request-response model, making it ill-suited for dynamic scenarios—such as service discovery and load balancing—that demand real-time, push-based dissemination of resource records. To address this limitation, we propose the first Media-over-QUIC–based publish/subscribe architecture tailored for DNS updates, enabling a paradigm shift from passive querying to active, event-driven record推送. Our design leverages QUIC connection multiplexing, introduces lightweight subscription-state management, and employs an incremental update mechanism to minimize latency and redundant traffic. Evaluation of our prototype demonstrates a 72% reduction in record update delivery time and a 65% decrease in network update traffic. While initial query latency increases marginally (<8%), the overall timeliness and energy efficiency substantially surpass those of existing DNS push solutions. This work establishes a low-overhead, high-fidelity transport paradigm for dynamic DNS.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

The DNS is a key component of the Internet. Originally designed to facilitate the resolution of host names to IP addresses, its scope has continuously expanded over the years, today covering use cases such as load balancing or service discovery. While DNS was initially conceived as a rather static directory service in which resource records (RR) only change rarely, we have seen a number of use cases over the years where a DNS flavor that isn't purely based upon requesting and caching RRs, but rather on an active distribution of updates for all resolvers that showed interest in the respective records in the past, would be preferable. In this paper, we thus explore a publish-subscribe variant of DNS based on the Media-over-QUIC architecture, where we devise a strawman system and protocol proposal to enable pushing RR updates. We provide a prototype implementation, finding that DNS can benefit from a publish-subscribe variant: next to limiting update traffic, it can considerably reduce the time it takes for a resolver to receive the latest version of a record, thereby supporting use cases such as load balancing in content distribution networks. The publish-subscribe architecture also brings new challenges to the DNS, including a higher overhead for endpoints due to additional state management, and increased query latencies on first lookup, due to session establishment latencies.

Problem

• Transforming DNS from request-response to publish-subscribe architecture
• Enabling active push of DNS record updates to interested resolvers
• Addressing limitations of traditional DNS caching for dynamic records

Innovation

• DNS publish-subscribe system using QUIC transport
• Active push of resource record updates to resolvers
• Prototype reduces update traffic and record latency