Tag: DNS

What objective does Anycast DNS serve?

What is the aim of Anycast DNS?

Anycast DNS is an extra service that you can find from DNS providers. It is a helpful traffic-routing system that delivers website material very quickly. That is made feasible by the multiple nameservers that keep a specific similar IP address.

Each of these servers is positioned in a different location to be closer to the possible users. The user experience is enhanced, and DNS query replies are significantly quicker as a result. The closest and most accessible server will fulfill the user’s request. As a result, your customers won’t have to wait long to access and browse your website thanks to the Anycast DNS service, which almost eliminates latency.

How does it operate?

A device that is connected to the Internet communicates with a server by using its IP address. The most basic kind of communication is one-on-one interaction. It’s alright, and there’s a possibility that DNS resolution will function. However, if only one server has the required information, individual requests will have to travel quite far to reach it (A or AAAA record). The user won’t receive the desired response if the server is down. There won’t be a response to the query.

Advantages of implementing Anycast DNS

  • Improved uptime A server could crash, but there is a very slim probability that several servers would crash simultaneously. Therefore, your website will have enhanced uptime and be accessible at all times to your users.
  • Quicker reaction time. The waiting period is significantly reduced when your servers respond quickly. Few potential customers will leave your website.
  • Position in search results. The user experience includes things like loading times and response times. Search engines do not ignore these variables when determining how to rank your website.
  • Increased safety. If one of them is compromised, you can rely on other servers.

Is Anycast DNS appropriate for CDN (Content Delivery Network) use?

Yes, Anycast DNS is ideal for CDNs because it responds faster to queries and can route traffic to a local webserver.

Consider this network: you have visitors from three continents: North America, Asia, and Europe. You have made three copies of your website (3 web servers with 3 different IP addresses). You’ve set up Anycast DNS servers on each continent, so all traffic in North America goes to the webserver there, traffic in Asia goes to the Asian server, and so on for Europe.

Due to two factors, the CDN will significantly reduce latency. First, the Anycast DNS servers that are closer to the customers will be the first. They will both be in the same country and on the same continent. It won’t take long to resolve the domain.

The numerous copies of the site make up the CDN’s second component. You can divert visitors to a nearby web hosting and respond to domain name queries more quickly.

The two work well together to give your users a wonderful experience. In addition, they will encounter a lot less latency than if the nameservers and web servers were located on a different continent.

Conclusion

What do you currently think about Anycast DNS? It undoubtedly has benefits and can significantly increase network performance. Additionally, it is practical for scaling and simple to set up. Definitely, a tech you need to look at!

Authoritative DNS server explained in detail

An Authoritative DNS server is a really essential part of the DNS resolution process. Why? Because it stores critical information about the zone records (SOA record, A record, etc.). In this article today, we will explain it in detail, its purpose, how you can check it, and the main difference between an Authoritative DNS server and a Recursive DNS server. So, if this matches your needs, let’s explore it!

Authoritative DNS server – Definition

An Authoritative name server responds to Domain Name System queries such as the IP address of a mail server or the IP address of a website (A resource record). It responds to DNS queries with unique and definitive replies. It does not just give cached responses retrieved from another name server. As a result, it only responds to requests regarding domain names stored in its configuration system. Authoritative Name Servers are divided into two categories:

  • A Master server (also known as a Primary name server) keeps the original master copies of all zone records. 
  • A Slave server (Secondary name server) is a copy of the master server.

How to check it?

The nslookup command, which is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, is the simplest way to check the Authoritative DNS servers.

We’ll need to execute a DNS lookup for the NS DNS records, which will show all of the domain’s nameservers.

Open the Command Prompt on Windows or Terminal on macOS and Linux to get started. Then run the nslookup command as follows:

nslookup -type=NS highfive.me.uk

You’ll see a list of the domain’s nameservers, along with their IP addresses. You can replace “highfive.me.uk” with the domain name you want to verify.

Authoritative DNS server and Recursive DNS server – Main difference

An Authoritative DNS server responds to DNS requests using data configured by an originating source, such as a domain administrator or Domain Name System procedures. And in the meantime, a Recursive DNS server is a server that accepts a user’s website name or URL and checks Authoritative name server records to get the appropriate IP address. This is the primary distinction between an Authoritative DNS server and a Recursive DNS server.

Conclusion

You now have another piece of the DNS puzzle. What you should take away from this post is that the Authoritative DNS server is the one that stores DNS records and responds to DNS queries from Recursive DNS servers. Clearly defined, finding something on the Internet without the information they hold and the upgrades they allow and provide would be like looking for a needle in a haystack!

Monitoring service – definition

The Monitoring service gives you the ability to receive detailed information about the condition of your servers that you implement for your different services such as web, email, DNS, and many more. 

With it, you are able to check and understand the status of your servers in real-time. By constantly monitoring your network, you are going to have the opportunity to detect different problems like a component failure or really slow traffic. Additionally, such type of service is going to notify you automatically through email, text, or in another way like web hooks if an issue occurs.

The Monitoring service aims to spot network issues, for example, overloaded routers, server failures, or network connection problems.

Check the link to test a great Monitoring service!

Thanks to such service, you could prevent downtime or failures before they occur by recognizing abnormalities that could lead to unwanted outages.

It is very important to implement constant monitoring that will maintain the integrity of your network. There are various different great tools. However, it is best to choose one that you can easily understand, such as those that provide a dashboard. That way, the entire process is going to be a lot easier, even for beginners.

Different types of checks

Depending on your Monitoring service, you are going to be capable of performing different types of checks. Yet, there are some types that are essential to know and understand:

Website HTTP(s): The system performs HTTP(S) requests to a precise web or a particular IP address. That way, it ensures that the URL response code is 200 and marks it as UP. In case the response code is different, it marks it as DOWN. You are able to adjust parameters, such as hostname, port, and path.

Ping (ICMP): It lets you understand the network activity for a specific domain or IP address. It sends ICMP ping checks to a specific IP address. Depending on the percentage of the packets that fail, for instance, 50% of them fail, the check is marked as DOWN.

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) – It creates a TCP connection to the particular IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) on the selected port number. In case the connection is successful, it marks it as UP. On the other hand, if the check is unsuccessful, it is marked as DOWN.

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) – It inspects the selected UDP port number on the particular IP address. When the connection is successful, it marks it as UP. Additionally, when the connection is unsuccessful, it is marked as DOWN.

Domain Name System (DNS) – It performs a DNS query for a specific hostname. Additionally, you select the type of query on the assigned IP address. When the answer is not the same as the expected answer, it is marked as DOWN.

Advantages of using Monitoring service

There are several outstanding advantages of the Monitoring service.

It helps you avoid outages. 

The implementation of a Monitoring service is probably the most easy and simple approach to prevent outages from occurring in the first place. 

Discover and fix any problems quickly. 

Time is crucial for every online business, especially in down situations. Thanks to a Monitoring service, problem-solving is more effortless and faster. It is going to help you to get to the bottom of any issue. It doesn’t matter if it is a configuration error or a strange traffic spike.

Maintaining better network visibility

The Monitoring service provides you with the visibility to be one step ahead of possible problems. Additionally, showing network performance information in a real-time and easy-to-understand format helps you identify issues easily.

DDNS (Dynamic DNS) – How does it work?

What is DDNS (Dynamic DNS)?

The DDNS abbreviation means Dynamic Domain Name System. It’s a very useful method to update your name server automatically and regularly. It updates IP addresses every time they change, together with their corresponding A (IPv4) and AAAA (IPv6) records. It saves you the time and effort of doing this task manually.

Internet service providers (ISP) constantly change IP addresses for clients. They have a big challenge administrating them, not to run out of them. They need a unique IP address for every device that gets connected to their network. 

Maybe as a regular home-Internet-user, you don’t get impacted by these constant IP changes. Businesses are a different story. If a business offers a service -or multiple services- through Internet, its servers for sure are affected by such IP address changes. Every change means a risk for its users requesting the service, not to have access since they are trying with a previous, not valid IP address.

Businesses have to look for alternatives:

  • A person in charge of constantly monitoring and changing the IP address manually whenever it gets changed by the ISP.
  • Paying to have a static IP address. It’s an expensive solution. IP addresses are not an unlimited resource, and to have sets or pools of them also has a cost for the ISPs. If they provide you a fixed IP address, they can’t use it for other clients.
  • Using DDNS to keep IP addresses up to date automatically. 

It’s not a hard quiz, right? Using DDNS is definitely the most simple choice. 

How does DDNS work?

Once you get the DDNS service, you won’t worry about monitoring and updating your IP address. But let’s go a bit deeper on how the process works.

Your business offers a service through the Internet. So you have your own server or servers. To make the service available for external users, you need to follow a few steps. Your business network (inside) has to communicate with the Internet through a network address translation (NAT) router. NAT will assign an IP address to your server/s.

Then, port forwarding will be required, plus an external port (Portex) and IP address (IPex). Done! The service is now available for external users via the Internet. At this point, IPex changes will become a problem or not if you get DDNS service. 

Once you get the DDNS service from a provider, DDNS software is set up on your network. IPex is added to the DDNS info, and NAT must be configured to update the IPex whenever needed and inform the DNS server about it. 

What NAT will ask you is to add your DDNS account and password, and that’s it! They will work together, communicate all the time, for you not to worry. 

Why use DDNS?

It brings very convenient benefits:

  • Easy to use solution. You get the service, the software is installed, and that’s it.
  • Notifications of IP changes to the DNS server are real-time.
  • Constant access to your server or website. Just by using the hostname, users will reach you, no matter if the IP address changes.
  • It’s a cost-effective solution. There are paid and free DDNS providers. It’s cheaper than paying static IPs for your business’ devices.
  • Remote access or VPN access will work smoothly for your employees working from home. 
  • Installation of security cameras on your business. They will need a connection to the Internet to work properly. With DDNS, they will keep available 24/7.
  • People using their computer at home for hosting an app, game server, website, etc., totally will feel the benefits of DDNS.

Conclusion

DDNS is very useful. If everything is set up correctly, it is a resource that won’t interfere with the performance of your system. Exactly the opposite. It will optimize it. Try it now!

What is DDoS Protected DNS, and do I need it?

Statistics about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks’ growth and frequency around the world are scary. Nobody wants to experience them, but there is no way to deny, anybody can be targeted. 

The time a DDoS attack can last is not a minor issue. Some have lasted a few hours, but others, days. Every hour your business is shut down means losses for you. Plus the cost for fixing the DDoS side effects on your site.

So from now, the answer is yes. If you have an online business, you definitely need protection against DDoS attacks.

What is a DDoS attack?

There are different ways for DDoS attacks to occur. In general, they choose a target (server, computer, or complete network) to overwhelm it through massive amounts of traffic coming from multiple infected sources (worldwide distributed devices).

Daily the number of connected devices to the Internet increases and the scope of such attacks gets multiplied. Think how easy it could be to infect all the insecure wearables and IoT (watches, wristbands, toys, fridges, toasters, home lights, cameras…) for attacking through them. Attack amplification can grow crazily. 

Some common DDoS techniques are:

  • Attacks through volume (floods). The objective is to clutter the target’s bandwidth with crazy loads of traffic. The scale for measuring them is bits per second (Bps). 
  • Attacks via a protocol. Protocols are rules for exchanging data on the Internet. Taking advantage of such rules, hackers can control the system. Through big loads of malicious packets, target protocols (TCP/IP, load balancers, firewalls, etc.) get consumed abnormally fast. The measurement scale used is packets per second (Pps).  
  • Attacks through the application layer. The victim is an edge server running a web app. Detection gets harder since bringing down an app is easier. It requires a more moderate amount of requests (traffic) to drown memory and CPU. They are measure in requests per second (Rps).

What is a DNS amplification attack?

To scale the damage is a clear DDoS objective. To get it, DNS amplification is used. Let’s explain it broadly. 

  1. A target is chosen. 
  2. A fake IP address for the target is forged. 
  3. DNS requests are sent to a DNS server with the forged IP address. More and more requests can be made to different DNS resolvers. 
  4. The target receives a massive response. 
  5. Resources get depleted. 
  6. The target is brought down.

What is DDoS Protected DNS?

The DDoS protected DNS is a robust network with strategically located servers in the world. What servers smartly do is to balance the traffic’s load. To be aware in case of an attack. Once spikes in traffic are detected, servers in the network distribute the load. If the attacker manages to bring down a server, more will still be working for your business, not suffer downtime.

This is extra protection for your business that is not included in basic DNS plans. What providers mostly offer for mitigating DDoS is:

  • 24/7 monitoring. DDoS attacks produce some traceable signs such as rare requests’ patterns, suspicious traffic related to an IP address or similar IPs, uncommon traffic loads, spikes, strange traffic in specific pages of your website, etc.
  • Load balancing. The wider a network is, the easier it is to balance big traffic among servers and guarantee up-time for your business. Prevention is the best choice when it is about online security.
  • Modern software. Efficient DDoS protection should prevent and also be ready to react in case of an event: firewalls, traffic filtering, notifications (alarms), real-time bot detection, and more.

Conclusion

DDoS protected DNS is a convenient investment for businesses looking for constant uptime and security. If you doubt, just think how much risk are you willing to afford for your business?

5 most popular DNS records

Here you have 5 most popular DNS records. You will find them on your first day of managing a DNS. Each of them is extremely important for the right functionality of the DNS. There are many more DNS record types, but those 5 essential DNS records are a good start for the first contact with the DNS records.

A record

The A record is the best-known record out there. It is the first that you will add to your Master zone. It links the hostname to its IP address. The address, in this case, is IPv4 (32-bit).

When somebody wants to visit your site, he or she will need the A record to find the domain name’s IP address. When he or she types the domain name, his or her browser will go on a look for the A record, and when it finds it, it can resolve the domain.

The A record is still popular, despite there is a newer AAAA record. 

What is RP record and why do you need it?

AAAA record

The AAAA record is a newer DNS record than the A record with a similar purpose – it too links domain name to IP address. The difference is that in this case, the IP address is IPv6 (128-bit). The IPv6 is here to replace the IPv4, which is already not sufficient. Just like the A record, you can add AAAA records to the Master zone. You can have multiple AAAA records for better availability.

Now, you can see both A and AAAA records together, but the AAAA record will completely replace the A record in the future.

NS record

The Name server records (NS records) show which are the authoritative name servers for the particular DNS zone. They will link your domain name to the hostname of the name servers. Example – domain.com to ns1.domain.com. You need to put NS records and specify which are the authoritative name servers or simply your zone won’t work. Do you see how we couldn’t skip this record in our 5 most popular DNS record list?

MX record

The MX record is a Mail Exchanger record that shows, who is the email server, that should receive emails for the particular domain. It should have the domain name and point to the hostname of the incoming mail server. Take a note. It must point to a hostname, not an IP address.

You can have multiple MX records and set different priorities. That way, you can have a backup MX record in case there is a problem.

Why should you care about the MX record? It is simple. Without MX records, you will not be able to receive emails. Good enough reason, right?

TXT record

The TXT record looks simpler than other DNS records but actually has many faces. A TXT record could be a DMARC, DKIM, SPF, or another. Visually, it could be read even from a human. It can have different values to define how a certain process must be handle. A lot of its value in the world of DNS comes from the fact that TXT records serve various verification functions. They add extra security to the processes. The TXT records are mostly used in sending, receiving, and reporting emails.

Conclusion

Now you know more about the 5 most popular DNS records. The DNS world is vast, but you have already made your first step. Congratulations. Go ahead and deep dive into each of them. Learn them well and start using them.

Do I need a Premium DNS hosting for my website?

Do you really need a Premium DNS hosting? Can you use a free DNS service, or do you need any DNS service at all? Honestly, it depends a lot on the size of your site and its traffic. If you have a really small size, light one, and you have very few visitors, you don’t.

​Basics of DNS service

We can’t truly talk about a Premium DNS if we don’t mention what DNS is. In short, it is a global network of name servers that has the main purpose of indicating where domain names really are. They link the domain names to their IP addresses. Other than that, the DNS will have features like linking hostnames to other hostnames, additional instructions about services, verifications, and more.

So the DNS is a communication network that will orientate all your users, direct them to the right addresses or other hostnames.

When knowing all that, there are a few questions that will help you define if you need a Premium DNS or no:

  • How many people need to connect to the site?
  • How often will they connect?
  • Where do these people live? Do you have an international audience, or almost all of your site visitors are from your country?
  • Do you need any additional security features? How important is it for you to protect your visitors at every step of their website journey?

​When to use a free DNS?

Various companies offer Free DNS plans with limited features or bandwidth caps. They can boost the performance of your domain resolving, and they can help you with multiple points of presence for international visitors. The thing to consider with them is their limits. How many DNS records can you create? Do you have a maximum amount of queries per month? Are they enough for you? Does the provider have all the security features that you need?

An important point is to check if these providers have paid options too. One day, you can grow your site, and you will need the boost. Can the provider give it to you?

​When do you need a Premium DNS?

You need a Premium DNS if you have a bigger site, with many visitors per month often visit the site. You will need the Premium DNS if your site is international. Imagine if all of your visitors, no matter if they live in America, Asia, or Europe, need to connect to your name server in Amsterdam. It will take a lot of time for the non-Europeans. You can use the premium features like many points of presence as close as possible for your visitors. Create CDNs and make the experience a lot faster for the visitors. It is very important.

Also, if you have an e-commerce site, pay attention to security. You don’t want any risk for your users, don’t you? Add advanced DNS security with features like DNSSEC, add records for email servers like MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Get your DNS on the top level of security.

​In conclusion:

If you have a small static site, a blog, or portfolio site, with a small number of visitors, you are ok without any managed DNS service. You can improve it with a free DNS service. When you start to grow, it would be a good idea to start using a free DNS plan to speed up the domain resolving for your users.

When your site becomes bigger, you have visitors from around the globe, and you need to ensure excellent security. That is the time to start using a Premium DNS service. It will boost performance, speed, redundancy, and security.

5 reasons to use Managed DNS

Are you getting too tired of seeing how slow your site loads? We bet you have found Managed DNS as a solution to speed up your website’s performance. But it is far more than just a speed booster. Let’s see the top 5 reasons to use Managed DNS. 

Managed DNS – Why do you need it?

Multiple points of presence (PoP)

5, 10, 20, or even more! You can have PoPs in different countries and continents that contain DNS records. A user from a place far away from your Primary server will still get its query resolved incredibly fast. Without Managed DNS, the query will travel a long time until it gets answered. Set up PoPs in all the important locations for your business. Most companies offer plans with the most connected spots in North America, Europe, and Asia, and there are others with locations on all of the continents. 

Better uptime (availability)

So let’s say you have 10 PoPs. There is a problem, a massive one, that brings 5 of them down. What do you think will happen? Your site or application will continue to function! One of the rest of the DNS servers will step up until all of them are back. Your users could experience a slightly slower experience, but you will stay online. Better availability is crucial for every e-commerce business now. 

You can set it up with a load balancing method and even make it automatic, so you don’t need to worry at all. 

Scalability

You can start small, but if your site is getting more popular, you can expand your service. You can add more features to make it faster, more secure, or failed-proofed. 

In some cases, when you are starting, you can satisfy your needs with a simple free plan. When the revenues and traffic go up, you can simply upgrade with a few clicks. Or you can plan a promotion campaign and upscale for a short period.

In the worst-case scenario that your business is struggling for a while, you can downscale. That way, you can lower your expenses and still stay operating. 

Better cost

Can you create your own DNS? Yes, but this will be extremely expensive. Imagine searching all around the world and making local deals for servers. Negotiating prices with local Internet providers. In the end, you will get extremely tired, and you will pay many times more. 

With a Managed DNS service, you don’t worry about hardware, and your concern is just to manage it properly. 

Security

DDoS attacks from everywhere and pointing at everybody. This is the world that we are living in. With a Managed DNS, you could benefit from balancing the load between all the available DNS servers. That way, you can resist a certain level of bad traffic towards your site. Everybody has a limit, but if you want to increase your chances, you will need more servers and some of them to be DNS protected servers. That means that they can analyze the traffic and spot suspicious activities. They can then take further action to protect your DNS. There are different failovers to automate actions and keep your site up, by discarding packets, banning IP addresses, or redirecting the traffic. 

Conclusion

So, did you get convinced by the utility of Managed DNS already? Yes, there are many benefits to use it. 

Now the question is, which Managed DNS service provider should you choose. There are many good and well-priced DNS service providers. We will leave this decision up to you. Only you can best know your needs and budget.

GeoDNS explained 

Every time users request a website, and it takes a long time to be loaded, they leave! Website owners know that it could be that the server is busy or the server is located too far from the user. But users do not care and just abandon the site and maybe never comes back.

That’s called latency. A severe problem for website owners that, fortunately, can be fixed!

What is GeoDNS, and how does it work?

GeoDNS (Geographical Domain Name System) means a traffic distribution process based on the requests’ location. This is possible due to a group of name servers strategically located on different spots (regions, countries, continents).

When a visitor requests a domain, a long and complex process of domain resolving gets triggered. And it must happen in a few seconds for the site to be served successfully and fast.

Once the visitor types a domain in the browser, a request will travel to a DNS resolver. In the case of GeoDNS, the DNS server will read the visitor’s IP address to know the user’s location. Already knowing that the request will be sent to the closest server. Finally, this last will serve visitor’s request.

The difference between a traditional DNS service and GeoDNS is that the traditional DNS servers have the same IP address for the domain. The GeoDNS have different IP addresses, depending on the region, and that is the magic boosting the speed.  

Benefits of having GeoDNS

There are clear benefits of enabling GeoDNS for your domain. 

Optimized distribution of traffic

Intelligent management of traffic is possible through GeoDNS. It is a load balancing solution. It ensures the closest nameserver to the visitor will respond to the request. Besides, through this distribution, traffic overload can avoid automatically.

Uptime enhancement

Having not a DNS server but a group of them is a great benefit. In case a server is down, the visitor’s request for sure will find another server that will answer.

Faster loading

Fast loading is vital to improve the users’ experience and a key factor to be ranked better in search engines. Considering the smart location process of GeoDNS, waiting time definitely will be shorter for your visitors. This is already a great advantage but, now that offering a positive user experience will also be taken into account to be positioned in the first search results, the benefit is even more valuable.

IP filtering (Geofencing)

To deny access or direct users from a specific region, a website you choose can be done through IP filtering. 

A singer, contracted exclusively by a British company, will release a new set of songs. The access to the new material can definitely be restricted through IP filtering just for British users. IP’s coming from other countries will be dropped.

Ventures who want to offer different contents per continent can configure the access aligned with that objective. 

For whom GeoDNS is? 

GeoDNS is good for all kinds of businesses. Small and medium websites would like to have it for growing. And large companies, for running smoothly the big needs they have.

But let’s say there are specific companies that can get the most out of it. International companies (tech, banking, and more) managing massive amounts of traffic, content platforms, and their need of delivery for a worldwide audience or e-commerce, always looking for high uptime and low latency to guarantee profits.

Conclusion

GeoDNS is a technology that offers real benefits to your business. If your company is growing internationally or if you are already global, keep it in mind. Big needs require advanced and efficient solutions!