The DNS Museum

zdw — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:21:34 +0000

DNS Museum · 49 entries

A reference for the odd, inventive, and always impractical things people have done with DNS.

A predictable traceroute path uses PTR records on its routers to spell lines from “American Pie”, turning reverse DNS into a lyric display.

A traceroute to bad.horse spells lyrics through reverse-DNS names; signed.bad.horse adds a separate Easter egg in its TLS certificate chain.

A static traceroute uses reverse-DNS names to reveal a Christmas tree, with each hop adding another branch to the seasonal picture.

A traceroute display used live Euro 2020 scores, pairing a controlled route with DNS names to turn network diagnostics into a changing scoreboard.

An IPv6 traceroute uses reverse-DNS names to draw a hand; raising the hop limit reveals more of the picture one numbered hop at a time.

A traceroute spells out lyrics from “Let It Snow” in the reverse-DNS names returned for each hop.

A predictable static route sends probes through selected IP addresses whose PTR records spell a Star Wars story in ordinary traceroute output.

DONUTS expands to “DNS over normal, unencrypted TCP streams”: a deliberately literal reminder that DNS can run over a simple stream transport.

IRC carries hostname and IP mappings that a local cache and libc Name Service Switch use to resolve names without publishing them through DNS.

A Mastodon bot connects federated social messaging with DNS queries and reports whether the returned DNS data passed DNSSEC validation.

DialDNS lets a caller ask a recursive resolver questions by telephone, turning spoken interaction into a novel DNS client interface.

This project carries DNS questions and answers inside ICMP ping packets, using ping as the transport for DNS lookups.

A Signal conversation presents DNS questions and answers as secure messages, exposing the resolver exchange through a familiar chat interface.

SMS carries a compact representation of DNS questions and replies, demonstrating a constrained alternative to the usual UDP or TCP exchange.

A Telegram bot accepts a DNS question in chat and returns the resolver’s answer as a message, placing lookup behind a messaging interface.

A short-lived social account accepted DNS lookup requests and posted answers, using a platform API as the client interface.

XEP-0418 describes how XMPP can carry DNS requests and responses, bringing resolver lookups into a formal messaging extension.

txtrex stores blog posts in TXT records: query one name to list posts and another to retrieve a post, making publishing possible with DNS alone.

A Reverse Polish calculator accepts operands in a DNS name and returns a dynamically computed answer, a small service you can query with dig.

A carefully formed DNS query retrieves a geocaching clue in TXT data, turning the resolver into a lightweight interface for a field game.

Players issue DNS queries as game actions and read story text in the answers; round-robin responses can add chance to the adventure.

These TXT-record experiments return ASCII art, mazes, QR codes, music, and games, showing how one textual answer format can support many toys.

The Drink DNS server returns current or next-day weather in TXT answers; encode a city and time in the queried name to retrieve the report.

dns.toys exposes small utilities through crafted DNS names, including currency conversion, world time, IP echo, number-to-words, and usable CIDR range calculations.

Drink is Stéphane Bortzmeyer’s experimental authoritative DNS server: query different names and record types for dynamic answers such as greetings, client addresses, and diagnostics.

This comic imagines Google focusing on its 8.8.8.8 public resolver, a cultural snapshot of how visible public DNS became.

A web client retrieves page content from DNS answers while a conventional server supplies the surrounding page, blurring lookup and content delivery.

Team Cymru maps an IP address to its autonomous system number through a structured DNS query, giving network operators a scriptable routing lookup.

A DNS LOC record publishes an approximate location for the International Space Station, updated every 15 minutes on a best-effort basis.

A resolver query reports the client address visible to the DNS service, which can differ from the address configured on the device.

A DNS query triggers a Wikipedia lookup and returns the result in an answer, using DNS as a text retrieval path for clients with limited connectivity.

Each DNS query submits a Wordle-style guess and the answer reports game state, expressing an interactive loop in short DNS messages.

Browsertunnel sends arbitrary browser data through DNS prefetch requests. The channel is one-way because browser JavaScript cannot read the DNS answers.

DNS tunnelling encodes data in query names and answers to create a constrained communications channel, a pattern with both legitimate and harmful uses.

dnscat2 provides an encrypted command-and-control channel over DNS, with support for shells, file transfers, and TCP port forwarding.

FToDNS transfers files through DNS queries and answers, splitting data across a transport with strict size and timing limits. It does not implement the FTP protocol.

iodine builds an IP tunnel between two endpoints over DNS, so other IP traffic can use the link, with low throughput and DNS-shaped constraints.

The Android app SlowDNS presents a VPN carried over DNS, an inventive option for networks that allow DNS but restrict other traffic.

An experimental chatbot accepts conversational requests as DNS lookups, trading a familiar interface for DNS-sized questions and answers.

BIMI uses DNS records to point mail systems to brand logos; the talk notes that DMARC must be configured before the logo display can be used.

CatDNS is an intentionally playful authoritative DNS server: ask it for a name and it answers with a cat-themed result.

A Route 53 proposal puts machine configuration in DNS records, using lookups in place of tools such as Puppet, Ansible, or Chef.

DNSKV is a generic public key-value service: names identify keys and DNS answers return values, backed by caches distributed across recursive resolvers.

A NoSQL experiment treats names in a DNS zone as hierarchical keys and their records as values, while inheriting DNS caching and update semantics.

DNSFS layers filesystem operations over DNS and resolver caches; its author demonstrated the design by streaming an MP3 through the DNS-backed filesystem.

This experiment divides image data into DNS-sized fragments and reassembles them at the client, stretching a lookup protocol into bulk transfer.

Malicious software can retrieve payload fragments stored in DNS TXT records, using DNS as a delivery channel. This is a defensive case study.

A shell pipeline requests encoded audio fragments through DNS, rebuilds the bytes, and plays them: an intentionally inefficient media transport.

NUM built a DNS data protocol with an SDK and npm modules; its Yellow Pages example retrieves structured company contacts through public resolver infrastructure.

dns.museum

The DNS Museum