# Shoud I use DNSMasq with a Reverse Proxy?



## nx (Aug 8, 2012)

I'm currently using pound as reverse proxy to serve app, mail, and development tool servers, and thinking about rebuilding the server to use nginx instead. 
A few tutorials to build reverse proxy servers include dnsmasq.

However,
- I don't currently use internal DNS (other than identically configured /etc/hosts per server,
- I've no need for DHCP,
- I can resolve internal servers by IP address or externally by host.domain A records, which is enough for my needs,
- I don't need to resolve domains internally without access to external A records, which from what I've read is a benefit of dnsmasq?

I'm wondering if I've overlooked any of dnsmasqs' benefits?

Would I benefit from setting up a lite DNS like dnsmasq with/on my reverse proxy server, in terms of speed/security/network maintenance?

Thanks


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## kpa (Aug 8, 2012)

It's a caching resolver meaning that it will keep a copy of an already resolved DNS record in it's cache as long as it's valid, I would think your reverse proxy is doing quite a bit of name resolving and the target server will have to resolve the same address again when the request hits it. I'd say you will see some increase in performance with a caching DNS resolver.


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