GetHostEntry is very slow

Question

I have a WinForms app, and I\'m trying to get reverse DNS entries for a list of IPs displayed on the form.

The main issue I\'ve run into is System.Net.Dns.GetHostEn

Answer 1

You can improve the speed of a failed lookup considerably by querying the in-addr.arpa domain. E.g to perform a reverse IP lookup for IP address A.B.C.D you should query DNS for the domain D.C.B.A.in-addr.arpa. If reverse lookup is possible a PTR record with the host name is returned.

Unfortunately .NET does not have a general API for querying DNS. But by using P/Invoke you can call the DNS API to get the desired result (the function will return null if the reverse lookup fails).

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

public static String ReverseIPLookup(IPAddress ipAddress) {
  if (ipAddress.AddressFamily != AddressFamily.InterNetwork)
    throw new ArgumentException("IP address is not IPv4.", "ipAddress");
  var domain = String.Join(
    ".", ipAddress.GetAddressBytes().Reverse().Select(b => b.ToString())
  ) + ".in-addr.arpa";
  return DnsGetPtrRecord(domain);
}

static String DnsGetPtrRecord(String domain) {
  const Int16 DNS_TYPE_PTR = 0x000C;
  const Int32 DNS_QUERY_STANDARD = 0x00000000;
  const Int32 DNS_ERROR_RCODE_NAME_ERROR = 9003;
  IntPtr queryResultSet = IntPtr.Zero;
  try {
    var dnsStatus = DnsQuery(
      domain,
      DNS_TYPE_PTR,
      DNS_QUERY_STANDARD,
      IntPtr.Zero,
      ref queryResultSet,
      IntPtr.Zero
    );
    if (dnsStatus == DNS_ERROR_RCODE_NAME_ERROR)
      return null;
    if (dnsStatus != 0)
      throw new Win32Exception(dnsStatus);
    DnsRecordPtr dnsRecordPtr;
    for (var pointer = queryResultSet; pointer != IntPtr.Zero; pointer = dnsRecordPtr.pNext) {
      dnsRecordPtr = (DnsRecordPtr) Marshal.PtrToStructure(pointer, typeof(DnsRecordPtr));
      if (dnsRecordPtr.wType == DNS_TYPE_PTR)
        return Marshal.PtrToStringUni(dnsRecordPtr.pNameHost);
    }
    return null;
  }
  finally {
    const Int32 DnsFreeRecordList = 1;
    if (queryResultSet != IntPtr.Zero)
      DnsRecordListFree(queryResultSet, DnsFreeRecordList);
  }
}

[DllImport("Dnsapi.dll", EntryPoint = "DnsQuery_W", ExactSpelling=true, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, SetLastError = true)]
static extern Int32 DnsQuery(String lpstrName, Int16 wType, Int32 options, IntPtr pExtra, ref IntPtr ppQueryResultsSet, IntPtr pReserved);

[DllImport("Dnsapi.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern void DnsRecordListFree(IntPtr pRecordList, Int32 freeType);

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
struct DnsRecordPtr {
  public IntPtr pNext;
  public String pName;
  public Int16 wType;
  public Int16 wDataLength;
  public Int32 flags;
  public Int32 dwTtl;
  public Int32 dwReserved;
  public IntPtr pNameHost;
}