Subprocess puzzle and two questions

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.3666.1352873042.27098.python-list at python.org>,
 William Ray Wing <wrw at mac.com> wrote:

> On Nov 13, 2012, at 11:41 PM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> 
> > In article <mailman.3664.1352867713.27098.python-list at python.org>,
> > wrw at mac.com wrote:
> > 
> >> I need to time the operation of a command-line utility (specifically 
> >> nslookup) from within a python program I'm writing.
> > 
> > Ugh.  Why are you doing this?  Shelling out to nslookup is an incredibly 
> > slow and clumsy way of doing name translation.  What you really want to 
> > be doing is calling getaddrinfo() directly.
> > 
> > See http://docs.python.org/2/library/socket.html#socket.getaddrinfo for 
> > details.
> > -- 
> Because, unless I'm badly mistaken (very possible), getaddrinfo doesn't let 
> me specify the server from which the name is returned. I'm really not after 
> the name, what I'm REALLY after is the fact that a path exists to the name 
> server I specify (and how long it takes to respond). In the "good old days" I 
> would just have ping'd it, but these days more and more DNS boxes (and 
> servers of all sorts) are shutting off their ping response.
> 
> Thanks, Bill

Oh, my.  You're using DNS as a replacement for ping?  Fair enough.  In 
that case, all you really care about is that you can connect to port 53 
on the server...

import socket
import time
s = socket.socket()
t0 = time.time()
s.connect(('8.8.8.8', 53))
t1 = time.time()
print "it took %f seconds to connect" % (t1 - t0)