The recommended way to support HIT look up in a client host is to use the python-based DNS proxy daemon. It is optional on hosts dedicated as servers. However, running the DNS proxy on e.g. a SSH server or IRC server has the benefit that it speeds up logins. The server software will try to resolve the HIT of the client to a hostname and introduces an articifial delay to the client if the HIT was not found. Running DNS proxy at the server avoids this delay.

The DNS proxy is located in the tools/hipdnsproxy directory and has to be started with root priviledges. After you start the script, it will rewrite /etc/resolv.conf to redirect all DNS look ups to itself so that it can return HITs to applications when applicable.

The DNS proxy tries to find host identities from two places: "hosts" files (/etc/hosts and /etc/hip/hosts), HI records in DNS. It returns the host identities as HITs or LSIs to the requesting application.

The DNS proxy can be run with or without resolvconf (in Ubuntu). The proxy can automatically detect the presence of dnsmasq software. They both occupy by default the same port and dnsproxy attempts always to reconfigure dnsmasq settings automatically. This way, both of them will still be used and they can co-exist in the same host.

The DNS proxy does not yet autodetect other DNS related software running on the same host. For example, it needs some help with ISC bind. You should associate bind explicitly with the IP addresses (or HITs) you want to use. The DNS proxy occupies IP address 127.0.0.53 and as long as bind uses different IP address than DNS proxy, both can co-exist on the same host.

If you encounter a bug with DNS proxy and loose your DNS settings, just try to reconnect your machine to the network. If this does not help, try rebooting your host; in case you're running dnsmasq, dnsproxy repairs then /etc/default/dnsmasq file if DNS proxy crashed for some reason.

The DNS proxy has multiple options that you configure e.g. to DNSPROXY_OPTS variable in /etc/init.d/hipdnsproxy file. Remember to run "/etc/init.d/hipdnsproxy restart" to make the changes effective. For example, including --hip-domain-prefix="hip." can speed up the DNS resolution because it tries to resolve HITs only when the host name begins with the "hip." string. Also, the DNS proxy returns HITs or empty DNS responses to the application as an extra security measure when the prefix matches.

The DNS proxy does not return IP addresses when it finds a HIT for a queried host. If you want to see the IP addresses, try "dig -t any hostname".