While reading up on gethostbyaddr on PHP.net, I saw a nice idea for using fsockopen to connect over UDP port 53 to any Public DNS server, like Google DNS 8.8.8.8, and sending the reverse addr lookup in oh about 100 bytes, then getting the response in oh about 150 bytes! All in less than a second. This is how/why to read/write data directly to the wire! This would be extremely valuable for use in things like my online header tool because it's faster than any other method. As usual, I went a bit overboard optimizing it to be lean and fast.

The goal is to add the HostGator server to be an exact mirror of the s.askapache.net domain, then to add that server as a 2nd A record to my DNS zone. That way half the visitors to the size will be taking up resources and bandwidth on the HostGator server instead of mine.

Round Robin A records in DNS are intended to evenly distribute queries between each host of the same name. Using some tricks straight out of a hackers toolbox we can verify if the distribution is taking place. (It is.)