Alternatives
Products that do what Mapping DNS does
I learned about LOC records some time around the start of the year from a post here on hackernews, and I've been slightly obsessed with the idea of mapping them ever since - and now I've finally done so! There ended up being a few more than I expected, but still very much within reasonable bounds.
- 1WD
2020 · which.nameserve.rs
- 2AS
2017 · dnsrecords.io
- 3

- 4CS
Hey HN, Last weekend I vibe-coded a cool website that lets you do easy DNS record lookups. I know you can just use dig or nslookup, but oftentimes I'm too lazy to remember the syntax, and there are less technical users who need to manage DNS entries but aren't comfortable with the command line. We debug customer DNS issues often at ImprovMX, and we typically link to tools like mxtoolbox.com to point out DNS record issues. But those tools seem quite bloated and from the 2000s. I wanted something super clean & simple, and there were a few features I thought were ergonomically needed but…
2025 · inspector.improvmx.com
- 5

- 6OD
Hey HN! We built DNS Directory (https://dnsdirectory.com), a free, searchable database of public DNS servers with live monitoring every 10 minutes. We needed to find an up-to-date list of DNS servers used by carriers around the world for a proxy fingerprinting / web-scraping project but we were shocked to find that it didn’t exist so we built it ourselves in an internal Hackathon We’re adding more features but so far we: Test 77K+ servers every ~10 minutes Allow filtering by uptime, location, security features (ad blocking, malware protection, DNSSEC) Show info on IPv6…
Dec 2025 · dnsdirectory.com
- 7BA
2020 · github.com
- 8DA
2020 · github.com
- 9DB
2020 · num.uk
- 10GB
2014 · dns-api.com
- 11DA
2021 · github.com
- 12DB
We’ve just launched NUM [1] in the UK, it’s an alternative to the semantic web [2] but based in DNS. We’ve published 23 million data points about 4.8m UK businesses. We had some really interesting HN feedback when we previously posted about one of our example apps [3] so keen to hear what the community has to say this time round. 1. https://www.num.uk 2. https://num.uk/blog/we-crawled-5m-uk-websites-and-published-23m-data-points-to-dns 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598164
2021
- 13RF
I often see question like "I'm with XXX registrar but want to change, which do you recommend?". People often offer helpful anecdotes so I thought I'd create a centralised place for them. Please check it out and contribute, if you have any experience with domain registrations!
2014 · domcomp.com
- 14DS
Vercel's Edge functions support custom deployment regions, and by querying DNS records through DoH, you can obtain the global resolution results of DNS.
2024 · github.com
- 15IT
2013 · 5f5.org
- 16WR
Hi HN, I previously wore SWE/SRE hats on GCP. Later, I was on the other side, managing thousands of machines. The friction points of onboarding and operating cloud systems are personal problems to me. I’ve found it hard to keep track of all the random cloud resources floating around, especially as my team’s assets proliferated. Occasionally, there is a resource affecting an outage but no one remembers where it is. I am constantly frustrated by existing tooling. APIs can work, after you’ve navigated the byzantine documentation, but I often find myself doing ad-hoc tasks which are best…
2022 · listvms.com
- 17YS
Every now and then I see these posts where people post the domains they purchased for XYZ side project that is clearly not happening. But considering how difficult it can be to find a good name, its always nice to see what people are willing to part with. Post your domains!
2013
- 18MN
Hello HNers. I'm launching my new service, Certician, and I'd love some feedback from HN users. A while back, I asked if anyone knew of any good, simple tools or services for monitoring SSL certificates [1]. I didn't find any compelling services, so I decided to build one. I tried to keep it simple, since it's self-run and bootstrapped. I know my landing page needs help. It's a lot harder to distill down a service (even a simple one) into compelling, actionable copy than I thought! I have to work at my real job today, so I'll only be able to reply when I have time to take a break for a…
2011
- 19BR
2018 · batname.com
- 20LC
Im working on a mind mapping app that would allow for integration of gamification features and be nicer and easier to remember. I was missing more advanced graphics from apps and being able to treat it as my note taking and learning tool. i.e. how (and why?) should I remember a mind map if it looks the same like all other maps and all i can do is pick couple of shapes and dashed/dotted lines? this simply doesnt work with my brain so i decided to create something better :) map on page is a preview of this, but im curious about the quiz, typing games and cheatsheet, would love some…
Oct 2025 · mindmapsonline.com
- 21AM
I recently finished a round of tweaks on my barebones mud-server and thought HN might be interested. https://github.com/endgame/MudCore It sits somewhere between socketmud and a full mud like tbamud in that it handles all the socket work and telnet negotiation, but it makes no assumptions about anything else. The other interesting thing is that it can talk to other services using ZeroMQ. I'm interested in reactions, particularly in terms of coding style, documentation quality and so on. It's my main "presentation piece" so far, in that it's some of the first code I actually feel proud to…
2012
- 22LC
I built LDNS because I'm constantly curious about domain names - who owns them, which nameservers they use, how they're configured, and what their DNS records reveal. I wanted a fast, easy way to investigate domains right from my browser without juggling multiple tools. LDNS runs entirely client-side using Cloudflare's DNS over HTTPS. Just type a domain and instantly see: All DNS records with clickable filtering RDAP/WHOIS data with registrar info and expiration dates Email security configuration (SPF, DMARC, MTA-STS, BIMI) Export options (JSON, CSV, BIND zones, PDF reports) Try it at…
2025 · ldns.com
- 23SA
Hi HN, as a learning experience, I created a small DNS resolver with blocking capabilities and resolution of local host names. There are already tons of good ad-blocking DNS implementations out there. And they do this much better than my implementation. Great examples are Blocky or pihole. So when I set out to "play around", I looked at these projects and tried to modify them. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for beginners, these are already quite far developed and complex projects. So impatient me set out to "quickly write something in Python". Almost two weekends later, I put in so…
2024 · github.com
- 24AO
If my experience is any indicator, the DNS issue seems to be getting worse as the hours go by, not better. However, I have found that adding OpenDNS servers (208.67.222.222, 208.67.222.222) to my list of DNS servers has completely eliminated the issue, at least for the time being. So, under my IPv4 configuration, in the "DNS Servers" field, I have "208.67.222.222, 208.67.222.222, 8.8.8.8" - the last one is the Google DNS server. I'm able to resolve Twitter, Github, etc.
2016
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