I'm not entirely sure (Admittedly, I've never really gone into that much detail to debug) WHAT it is precisely that Net::DNS takes so long with, whether its the outside lookups, or the packet work.
After caching an object, I can return it back very quickly (as is the point), so I don't think the basic packet disassembly/reassembly functions are particularly slow - I'm pretty sure the problem is mostly in the query/send/search functions.

JP,
-- Alexander Widdlemouse undid his bellybutton and his bum dropped off --