Too Much DNS Traffic / Analysis

[Jason C. Wells]

I get what I think is way too much traffic on DNS.  I recently read about
DNS misconfigurations and the trouble they cause.  I am suspicious that I
am one of the culprits.  (I have been running with the same config for
a long time.  I would mortified to find that my DNS is fubar.)

My DNS works.  I can query the world and the world can query me.  One
point of concern is that my name server is behind a firewall with PAT/NAT.

In 'ipfw show' I can see that 528 packets came in on smtp.  20 packets
came in on http.  Something like 40,000 packets came in on DNS in one day.
This seems to be way too much DNS traffic for the little bit of use my
network sees.

Much of what I have read is all about data gathering and techniques for
analysing DNS.  This stuff is way too technical and not practical.

Can any of you point me to a good practical reference on how to be a good
net neighbor with respect to DNS?

Thanks,
Jason C. Wells