# BIND 9

17 Hacker News commenters recommended BIND 9 and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Mature, stable DNS server people trust for DNSSEC, zone replication and split views. Critics point to a long history of security vulnerabilities.

## Why people recommend it

- Long deployment history, battle-tested (2 comments): "No other DNS resolver is going to come close to it's number of deployment*years in operation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073355)) "the most battle tested of them all" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991411))
- Simple, stable and few issues (2 comments): "I've been very happy with it, very few issues other than my own folly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519039)) "It’s incredibly simple and stable and easy to understand" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395132))
- Handles DNSSEC without issues (2 comments): "modern bind9 seems to just handle DNSSEC with no issues when I've used it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47919414)) "I've run DNSSEC with all three and have no complaints." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515399))
- Split views and zone replication (2 comments): "I use BIND and DNS replication (AXFR/IXFR) handles it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48035992)) "My favorite feature of bind is "split views"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092063))

## What people warn about

- Long history of security vulnerabilities (4 comments): "it's just a badly engineered piece of software and had braindead vulnerabilities for decades" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46114157)) "bind9 is not a dns server but a collection of all available CVE types for further studying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46076979)) "All software from ISC was/is littered with security vulnerabilities." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159227))
- Bugs, including upgrade problems (4 comments): "bind eating their query counter on IPv6 even if you don't have IPv6 routing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939124)) "Bind is the Microsoft Windows of DNS servers - a lot of users and bugs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46132933)) "they had an issue with BIND upgrade and it made up new keys" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48056828))
- Arcane syntax and zone files (2 comments): "arcane syntax that BIND 9 is apparently famous of" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519416)) "sick of maintaining BIND files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897720))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [dnsmasq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dnsmasq.md): 32 recommend
- [PowerDNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/powerdns.md): 15 recommend
- [djbdns](https://hackerapproved.com/p/djbdns.md): 8 recommend
- [Technitium DNS Server](https://hackerapproved.com/p/technitium-dns-server.md): 7 recommend
- [Knot DNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/knot-dns.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "BIND 9", https://hackerapproved.com/p/bind/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).