All Products
Search

This Product

    Alibaba Cloud DNS:How can the number of DNS requests be calculated?

    Document Center

    Alibaba Cloud DNS:How can the number of DNS requests be calculated?

    Last Updated:Jun 22, 2026

    DNS request counts are calculated differently depending on the zone type and whether the subdomain recursive resolution proxy is enabled.

    1. How can the number of DNS requests for a built-in authoritative acceleration zone be calculated?

      Domain Name System (DNS) records for built-in authoritative acceleration zones are not cached. Every DNS query initiated within the effective scope of the zone counts as a request.

    2. How can the number of DNS requests for a built-in authoritative regular zone be calculated?

      DNS records for built-in authoritative regular zones are cached. For example, if the time-to-live (TTL) of the DNS record for www.example.com is 60 seconds, the first DNS request is forwarded to the built-in authoritative module to query the record. If only one cache server is available, all subsequent requests within the next 60 seconds match the cached record and are not forwarded to the built-in authoritative module. Theoretically, the number of DNS requests for www.example.com in a day is 1440, calculated as 24 x 3600/60 = 1440.

      Note

      In practice, multiple local DNS servers whose IP address is 100.100.2.136 or 100.100.2.138 in the cloud provide DNS resolution services. DNS requests are distributed across these cache servers, and cached records are not shared among them. DNS requests can match cached records only when the records exist in each cache server. As a result, the number of DNS requests displayed in the console may be greater than the theoretically calculated value.

    3. How does the subdomain recursive resolution proxy affect the number of DNS requests?

      When the subdomain recursive resolution proxy is disabled, if an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance within the effective scope of a built-in authoritative zone initiates a DNS request that does not match any record in the built-in authoritative module, the NXDOMAIN result is returned. This request is still counted.

      When the subdomain recursive resolution proxy is enabled, DNS requests that match neither the records in the built-in authoritative module nor forwarding rules are recursively forwarded to the Internet. These requests are counted regardless of whether DNS records are obtained.

      Important

      Whether intranet DNS requests are counted depends on whether they match business rules. Requests that match business rules are counted regardless of whether DNS records are obtained.