DNS Anycast: why do we need it ?

DNS servers may not mean anything to you, but they are one of those tools that you use every day without even realizing it. These servers are at the heart of the Internet and the digital world we know today. Essential elements of the creation and development of your website, we present in this article all the things you need to know to understand and properly configure a DNS server.

What is the DNS Anycast service ?

To understand the DNS Anycast service, we must first identify what a DNS server is. A web site has necessarily a domain name. This is what allows it to be identified by all connected devices, such as a identity card. To be read and understood by the device in question, the information is transmitted through an IP address.

This address is then kept on a server, this is what the’have defined as the DNS server. We then distinguish two types of servers. Anycast’First, there are the Unicast DNS, where the server is located.

All devices wanting to access your site query your server, regardless of location.

But, two main issues are opposed to localized servers. If your information is in Canada and a user wishing to access the site is in France, the response time is increased, because the distance to travel is greater. In addition, if the DNS server experiences a failure or that it is attacked, your site will be inaccessible, since all information is stored in the same place.

Based on these complications, a second alternative system has been developed; the Anycast DNS servers. Decentralized, they are linked to parks, grouping several servers located around the world. The DNS Anycast duplicate the addresses on each server of the park.

Thus, depending on the location of the connection, the device will query the server closest to you.

How it works ?

When an Internet user tries to reach a website, his device must find the data that constitute your site. He will write in his search bar your domain name. The purpose of the DNS server is to translate the domain name written by a user into an IP address, servers, we speak of DNS resolution.

If there was no DNS server, we would have to have a directory with all the URLs of the sites we visit every day. It is necessary to enter the IP of each site at each connection, in order to display them correctly.

In concrete terms, when’When a user enters your domain name in the search bar, the algorithm will query a DNS server (usually the one closest to the user’s location)’user) and translate your domain name by your IP address. We can associate this with a gigantic directory capable of identifying the IP addresses of all the websites.

Why do we need a server?’a DNS Anycast ?

The DNS Anycast is nowadays the system widely favored by site editors, because it has three big advantages. First of all, this system allows you tooptimize the response time of your pages. As it uses the server closest to the user, the decrease in distance between the device and the server decreases the response time.

A site that takes a long time to respond can scare away the most impatient users and thus increase your bounce rate.

In other words, to to avoid bounce rates too important, search browsers like Google, assign an acceptable average loading time per site for the algorithms. By using a DNS anycast to improve your response time, you are well seen by the magic formulas of the various engines and you evolve in the referencing of search pages. In concrete terms, configuring a DNS Anycast server allows you to increase the performance of your site in terms of natural referencing.

Last but not least, Unicast DNS servers are used to manage your websitestore DNS information in a single location. Thus, in a situation of failure or if you undergo an attack, the data related to your website are simply no longer accessible. Thanks to the DNS Anycast server, this risk of failure is almost nil.

If one of these servers fails, the next one (the one closest to the user) will in turn transmit your site’s information, and so on.