RcodeZero Anycast DNS
A stable, performant and 100% available DNS network is one of the key elements for the Internet. Anycast clouds allows best availability of your nameservers. IPCom GmbH offers solutions for TLD operators, registrars and enterprises. Find out more below or in our flyer.
Anycast-DNS – ultimate availability for your zone
Anycast technology allows having the same IP address reachable on multiple geographic locations around the globe. Routing protocols on the Internet ensure that a request reaches the topological closest instance of the anycast cloud. Latency is minimized by that and, what’s more, traffic is distributed on the various locations (nodes).
In particular in the case of an attack on the nameserver network, only the closest node is affected and the others operate unaffected. Furthermore, since the whole anycast DNS network only utilizes one IP address, DNS packets stay smaller compared to multiple unicast instances (just a single NS record is contained in the delegation).
Anycast is a requirement if you intend to apply for a new gTLD - ICANN requires 100% availability for the authoritative nameserver network of such domains.
RcodeZero Anycast Cloud: State of the Art Infrastructure
The RcodeZero Anycast network currently consists of nine globally distributed nodes in the following locations:
- Seattle, WA, USA
- New York, NY, USA
- Brussels, Belgium
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Warsaw, Poland
- Dublin, Ireland
- Vienna, Austria
- Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Singapore, Singapore
with two “command and control“ servers in Vienna and Salzburg, Austria. The number of locations is continuously being expanded and by 2013 will reach 12 topologically significant locations.
The number of locations is not the only criterion for a high-performance network; the technical architecture and hardware play an even more important role. This is where we commit ourselves to the highest available standards and quality. Each RcodeZero Anycast location is served by two different upstream connections, handled by two physically separate routers. All servers are clustered with redundant disk storage and power supply systems. The capacity of each location mounts up to 500,000 DNS queries per second which adds up to 3 million queries per second for the whole anycast network. This capacity allows hosting of over 50 million customer zones in an extremely robust and latest state-of-the-art environment. The RcodeZero technical architecture complies with the respective RFC (Request for Comments) 4786 of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).
Service options on the IPCom Anycast Network
We offer DNS services on our anycast network in the following variants:
- For Top Level Domains - "TLD-DNS": Our anycast network acts as another secondary nameserver for your TLD. A dedicated anycast IP address and a host name selectable by you allows a high level of flexibility. Extensive monitoring and statistic features are a matter of course and give you a deep performance and availability insight.
- For registrars and end-customers - "Secondary-DNS": Offer your customers or yourself the high availability and performance of a worldwide anycast cloud on IPCom’s worldwide anycast network. IPCom takes care of the operation of the anycast network and you use the anycast DNS like any other nameserver. Query statistics are provided on a per domain basis. To provision the system use the SOAP-API or a web-interface.
Interested in one of our products? Do not hesitate to contact us!