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Also: ask me anything.


How do you see this positioned against something like MXToolbox? There seems to be a lot of overlap in features as it is today so I'm interested in your longer-term vision for wirewiki.


There are a ton of online DNS tool sites, MxToolbox being one of the largest.

I like the idea of evolution (diversity + selection) applied here. Many people building it differently and letting the market decide what's most useful.

My take on this space is making it a browsable graph instead of 'just' a collection of lookup tools. The internet _is_ a graph, and it often makes sense to inspect linked resources (Domain name -> name server -> IP address, for example).

As for the longer-term vision, I'd like to make this graph as complete as possible. It now only has DNS-related tools, but adding ASNs, BGP data, hosting providers, etc. would make the existing tools more useful with every addition.


Have you considered that this tool is also useful to attackers?


Yes. Ultimately nearly any tool can be used for good can also be used nefariously.

Internet infrastructure data is inherently open. I'm just presenting it in a more useful way. So any motivated actor can access it regradless.

In any case, exposing your IP during these lookups is bad operational security for them. So I would assume they'd prefer not to use Wirewiki.

All that to say: I don't feel conflicted about making these tools.


i remember watching your DNS course, it was very good! Do you have any other resources that you like? where i can learn internet infra, dns or anything. Thanks!!


Not they guy you asked but here's a free book https://book.systemsapproach.org (they have more free books on other topics like SDN)


Oh thanks!

Depends on how you prefer to learn, but here are a few suggestions.

I've heard good things about the Computer Networks book by Tanenbaum and Wetherall, but I haven't read it myself. Very broad and comprehensive. The most hardcore way would be to make reading RFCs your hobby. It can be tough to get through, but if you regularly take half an hour to do it, you'll learn so much. I've recently started a course at https://classes.pracnet.net/, which is good too.


HPBN -- High-Performance Browser Networking -- is an excellent (canonical?) resource: https://hpbn.co




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