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NSD - Authoritative DNS Name Server

A high-performance authoritative DNS server developed by NLnet Labs for operations where speed, reliability, stability, and security are paramount.

Why NSD?

NSD is designed with a pure philosophy that prioritizes raw performance. If you serve hundreds of thousands or even millions of queries per second, NSD is the leading implementation in the world.

Extreme Performance

Optimized C implementation with multi-process architecture for maximum throughput

DNSSEC Ready

Full DNSSEC support with efficient signing and validation

Battle-Tested

Powers some of the world’s largest DNS infrastructures

RFC Compliant

Reference implementation for emerging IETF DNS standards

Key Features

Zone Transfers

AXFR and IXFR support for efficient zone replication

TSIG Security

Transaction signatures for secure zone transfers

Catalog Zones

Automated zone provisioning and management

XDP Support

Express Data Path for extreme performance

Rate Limiting

Response rate limiting to mitigate DDoS attacks

Remote Control

Powerful nsd-control utility for management

Quick Navigation

Installation Guide

Build from source or install from packages

Quickstart Tutorial

Get NSD running in minutes

Configuration Reference

Complete configuration options

Operations Guide

Running and managing NSD

Production-Ready

NSD has been developed for operations in environments where speed, reliability, stability, and security are of high importance. It serves as the authoritative DNS server for numerous top-level domains and large-scale DNS infrastructures worldwide.
NSD is distributed free of charge under the BSD-3-Clause license. For most platforms, packages are available through your system’s package manager.

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