Hi everyone,

In this message, we ask you to look at our intended PowerDNS Recursor 4.1 development plan. The 4.0 release train has been very successful and reliable for a major ‘.0’ release and is seeing wide production use, including DNSSEC validation for millions of clients.

However, we have found some things that need improving for the 4.1 release.  This is the focus for 4.1: general improvement of quality, rounding out of features, and adding a few specific new features.

We ask you to take a REAL good look at what we intend to do. It is entirely possible that you are running into issues and challenges you are sure we know about already, when we in fact don’t. So if the PowerDNS Recursor is somehow not making you happy, and what ails you is not in the list below, we would LOVE to hear from you!

We are aiming for a June release of Recursor 4.1, but depending on developments this might be earlier or later, and possibly not with all features communicated below. This post is not a roadmap you can rely on. If you need to rely on certain features appearing by a certain time, please head to www.powerdns.com/contactform.html – for commercially supported customers we regularly commit to dates & features.

Already addressed since last 4.0 release, so no need to ask for this:

github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/issues/

#4988 – Add `use-incoming-edns-subnet` to process and pass along ECS
#4990 – Native SNMP support for Recursor
#5058 – Faster RPZ updates
#4873 – Ed25519 algorithm support
#4972 – 2017 root KSK added
#4924 – EDNS Client Subnet tuning & length configuration

All issues scheduled for 4.1 can be viewed on the rec-4.1.0 milestone on GitHub github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/milestone/7

Important highlights:

Improvements:
#5077 – DNSSEC validation is in need of a refactor (ongoing)
#4000 – And other tickets: more love & performance for RPZ

New features:
#5079 – EDNS Client Subnet port number
#5076 – RPZ persistency
#440 – DNS prefetching
#4662 – Continue serving expired cache data if all auths are down

If you want to help, please check out the full milestone listing github.com/PowerDNS/pdns/milestone/7 and see if (your) older issues might have been addressed by now.

Also, if you have an opinion on certain fixes, features or improvements, please add them to the GitHub issues so we learn about your concerns! You can also weigh in on our mailing lists.

Thanks!