898793 - let firefox be either a webbrowser or a DNS caching server, but not both

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking: DNS, defect)

Description

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 Iceweasel/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130626010340




Expected results:

Apparently, Mozilla cannot really decide what Firefox should be?!

Is it a DNS caching server or is it a webbrowser?

I guess most people would like to see it as the later, so drop any DNS caching functionality from FF.
It simply has no single reason to exist there. DNS caching is the task of the OS respectively the resolver, if that is broken or has bad performance than those guys have to fix it, not Mozilla by implementing a **** system which breaks the DNS at all kinds of places (starting from TTL leading up to load balanced systems).

It's really as simple as that...
Firefox = web browser
DNS caching = the system’s duty.

Comment 1

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

firefox exhausts typical recursive resolver caches due to its aggressive DNS speculation, so it needs to be able either size it appropriately to this use case or use some kind of application specific value replacement function.

another problem is that OS's do not universally provide local recursive resolvers with cachess (though some do). In these cases significant latency is incurred if firefox doesn't embed that logic. If that's part of the user experience we can improve, we're going to do it.

So some kind of caching layer is here to stay. However, I'd be happy to consider patches that bring RR TTL values into the algorithm. (other bug please)

Comment 2

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

Reopening, since the issues weren't fixed.

Especially as you severly break DNS by ignoring TTLs, which causes lot's of troubles - just see the number of open bugs related to it.

If you really rely on a firefox internal recursor (and no other applications seem to do so, which also make heavy use of DNS - so perhaps you rather have a design problem)... than a) make it right, which means respecting TTLs, round robin entries, DNSSEC, etc. pp.
AND
make it possible to disable it for people who don't want that rubbish, which seems to be no longer the case
AND
let it re-query the real resolver (i.e. not FF's broken one) when one intentionally, realoads a page.
Right now the only thing one can do is killing FF, which is kinda ridiculous.

Oh and... just because nobody has provided patches... that doesn't fix an issue, right? o.O

Comment 3

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

Hi. The bug was marked WONTFIX; not FIXED. I agree the complaint wasn't addressed. But we don't need a database full of stuff we aren't going to do - the reasoning is above.

a force reload (ctrl shift r) will bypass (and update) our dns cache.