Show HN: Browse Internet Infrastructure

https://www.wirewiki.com

67•pul•2h ago

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.

Comments

pul•1h ago

Also: ask me anything.

tushgaurav•1h ago

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!!

pul•1h ago

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.

ofrzeta•1h ago

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)

chrisweekly•36m ago

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

EdNutting•52m ago

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.

pul•45m ago

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.

esseph•36m ago

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

pul•19m ago

Yes. Ultimately nearly any tool can be used for good can also be used nefariously.

Internet infrastructure data is inherently open. I'm just presenting it in a more useful way. So any motivated actor can access it regradless.

In any case, exposing your IP during these lookups is bad operational security for them. So I would assume they'd prefer not to use Wirewiki.

All that to say: I don't feel conflicted about making these tools.

AndyMcConachie•46m ago

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!

pul•32m ago

Those are really useful suggestions, thanks!

> 1) Include a link to dnsviz.net to check on the DNSSEC status of domains.

I use DNSViz all the time. They've done a great job of displaying the entire trail and helping debug DNSSEC issues. But it's a bit too detailed for my liking. I'm thinking about how I would add this to Wirewiki. What to show and hide by default, how to format it, etc. Adding something similar is pretty high on my list for Wirewiki.

> 2) Shared fate [...]

I do already show ASNs for A/AAAA records, but adding those to NS and MX addresses as well would be useful. I'm a bit hesitant to add more data to the overview, but a separate page that shows an analysis of shared name server resources could be useful indeed. I've added it to the list.

> 3) displaying whether a domain exists on popular block lists would be awesome.

Absolutely. Already on the list :)

> You could spend the rest of your life building this and never actually completing it, be careful!

Haha, I've already spent 5 years, and I don't mind to keep going as long as it's interesting and sustainable!

maltalex•8m ago

Nice website, but I feel like calling it "wire wiki" is quite ambitious. Currently, it's a (beautiful) DNS lookup tool, but that's about it. I expected something like RIPE Stat [0], or something like the undersea cable map [1] (based on the "wire" in the name). Also, if you're doing DNS, take a look at resolve.rs [2], they have some nice DNS tools, though not as pretty as yours :)

And since you mentioned scanning the IPv4 address space for DNS servers - I did that as well at a some point for a product I've built (and even have a patent on). The list of servers you're going to get with a naive scanning approach is not what you want. It won't include the servers you probably want (such as the customer-facing DNS servers of ISPs), and will include an insane amount of junk, like home routers or weird IoT devices that expose their port 53. Hit me up via the email in my profile if you want to chat.

[0]: https://stat.ripe.net/

[1]: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

[2]: https://resolve.rs/

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