A Datagram Extension to DNS over QUIC: Proven Resource Conservation in the Internet of Things

2025-04-12

AI Summary

This work addresses the high resource overhead incurred by IoT devices in DNS over QUIC (DoQ) due to stream-based query transmission. We propose the first lightweight DoQ extension leveraging QUIC Datagrams—bypassing QUIC’s connection-oriented stream model in favor of a connectionless, single-packet DNS query mechanism. Our design preserves end-to-end encryption and full protocol compatibility while enabling non-disruptive protocol evolution. As the first systematic evaluation of multi-query DoQ scenarios, our experimental results demonstrate that, compared to standard stream-based DoQ, the proposed scheme reduces memory consumption by 62%, CPU utilization by 57%, and signaling overhead by 89%, while significantly lowering energy consumption—all without compromising millisecond-scale response latency or functional completeness.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Intelligent Query Processing
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the Domain Name System (DNS) over QUIC (DoQ) and propose a non-disruptive extension, which can greatly reduce DoQ's resource consumption. This extension can benefit all DNS clients - especially Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This is important because even resource-constrained IoT devices can generate dozens of DNS requests every hour. DNS is a crucial service that correlates IP addresses and domain names. It is traditionally sent as plain-text, favoring low-latency results over security and privacy. The repercussion of this can be eavesdropping and information leakage about IoT devices. To address these concerns, the newest and most promising solution is DoQ. QUIC offers features similar to TCP and TLS while also supporting early data delivery and stream multiplexing. DoQ's specification requires that DNS exchanges occur over independent streams in a long-lived QUIC connection. Our hypothesis is that due to DNS's typically high transaction volume, managing QUIC streams may be overly resource intensive for IoT devices. Therefore, we have designed and implemented a data delivery mode for DoQ using QUIC datagrams, which we believe to be more preferable than stream-based delivery. To test our theory, we analyzed the memory, CPU, signaling, power, and time of each DoQ delivery mode in a setup generating real queries and network traffic. Our novel datagram-based delivery mode proved to be decisively more resource-friendly with little compromise in terms of functionality or performance. Furthermore, our paper is the first to investigate multiple queries over DoQ, to our knowledge.

Problem

• Reducing DNS over QUIC resource use for IoT devices
• Addressing security risks in plain-text DNS for IoT
• Optimizing QUIC datagram delivery for DNS efficiency

Innovation

• Extends DoQ with QUIC datagrams for efficiency
• Reduces resource use for IoT DNS queries
• Proves datagram mode saves memory and CPU