NSD

The NLnet Labs Name Server Daemon (NSD) is an authoritative DNS name server. It has been developed for operations in environments where speed, reliability, stability and security are of high importance.

NSD has a pure design philosophy that prioritises raw performance. This means that if you serve hundreds of thousands or even millions of queries per second, NSD is one of the leading implementations in the world. The nameserver also features simdzone, a high-performance DNS presentation format parser that utilises instructions available in modern processors to substantially enhance the throughput of operations such as zone loading.

These features make NSD ideally suited for Top Level Domain implementations, DNS Root servers and anyone in need of a fast and optimised authoritative name server. Currently, three DNS root servers and many top-level domain registries use NSD as part of their server implementation. NSD has not implemented recursive caching by design. If you need a validating, recursive, caching resolver then NLnet Labs has Unbound available.

NSD is distributed free of charge in open source form under the BSD license. For most platforms, packages are available. The software is covered by a security patch policy. If you run NSD in a mission critical environment and you would like support backed by a Service Level Agreement directly from the developers at NLnet Labs, please visit our Support Contracts page for more information.