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wirewiki.com

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Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#1

Post by pul »

I'm launching Wirewiki.com today!

Wirewiki makes the internet’s hidden infrastructure browsable.

I quit my job 5 years ago to scale Nslookup.io. But after reaching 600k monthly users, I hit a ceiling. I couldn't naturally expand beyond DNS because of the domain name.

So I went back to the drawing board: how would I make it today? Not as a collection of tools, but as a browsable graph.

I've spent hundreds of hours and commits building that. It's not even at 10% of what I want it to be, but more than enough to be useful, and (in my biased opinion) much better than what's out there.

Wirewiki launches with DNS lookup, propagation, zone transfer and SPF checking. It also scans the entire IPv4 space for DNS servers and indexes them. I'm working on adding more data and tools.

I feel like I've developed tunnel vision, so if you see anything that feels off, let me know!

I'll keep Wirewiki open and free. Once it has a substantial amount of users, I'll open it up to sponsorship / brand integration from hosting providers, registrars and CDNs, as users will likely be in the market for those. But my goal is to keep Wirewiki free from display ads. I'm confident that's viable.

Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure
wirewiki.com

Re: Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#4

Post by pul »

tushgaurav wrote: post #3
pul wrote: post #2

Also: ask me anything.

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!!

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.

Re: Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#5

Post by ofrzeta »

tushgaurav wrote: post #3
pul wrote: post #2

Also: ask me anything.

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)

Re: Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#7

Post by AndyMcConachie »

Great site. If you don't mind I have feature requests, but feel free to ignore them because OSS is OSS and you shouldn't feel obligated.

1) Include a link to dnsviz.net to check on the DNSSEC status of domains. They've already done all the work and it would be a nice integration.

2) Something that I wish more DNS operators understood is the concept of shared fate between authoritative name servers. Shared fate can come in the form of same AS, same upstream, same parent domain, etc. Operators might think they have redundancy when in fact all their servers are located in the same AS, for example. If there is any way you can highlight this or show this it would be useful.

3) I didn't try looking up a phishing domain, but displaying whether a domain exists on popular block lists would be awesome.

I love your attempt at understanding all the TXT RRs that have spread across the DNS in the last 10 years. What a mess.

You're right in that this is a rabbit hole. You could spend the rest of your life building this and never actually completing it, be careful!

Re: Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#8

Post by pul »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #6
pul wrote: post #2

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.

Re: Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#9

Post by chrisweekly »

tushgaurav wrote: post #3
pul wrote: post #2

Also: ask me anything.

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!!

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

Re: Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

#10

Post by esseph »

pul wrote: post #8
BitsAndObjects wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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