Anycast DNS for registrars

Traficom offers fi-domain registrars a free-of-charge service to provide anycast secondary DNS for fi-domains and their holders.

Benefits of anycast DNS for domain holders:

• Improved performance for fi-domains
• Increased resilience for the name services of fi-domains
• Faster response times to DNS queries, which means better availability for fi-domains

Domain names work through DNS queries

Under Traficom's Regulation, an fi-domain name must have at least two name servers to guarantee the performance of any related services (website or email). Traditionally, these name servers (often referred to as unicast name servers) mean one server in one location responding to all DNS queries coming into its IP address. In case this server faces a DDoS attack (distributed denial of service) or fails for some other reason, the server will be unable to respond to incoming queries. If the domain name associated with the query has no other name servers configured for it, the related services (website or email) stop working.

What is anycast DNS?

Anycast technology allows a single name server to be placed in multiple locations around the world. Anycast name servers consist of multiple nodes in a variety of different geographical locations all over the world by using internet routing. All nodes of an anycast server respond to the same domain name/IP address query. The response to the query comes from the node nearest to the query’s origin (based on so called routing hops on the internet) which means a speedier delivery of website content. If a node goes offline due to a DoS attack or some other reason, the other nodes continue responding to queries. This increases the resilience of services connected to a domain name (website or email) significantly.

When thinking about security, every domain name should have multiple geographically distributed name servers.

Start using anycast

Are you an fi-domain name registrar? Do you manage fi-domain names and name servers for your customers? Do you want to provide better information security and DDoS protection for your customers?

Traficom offers fi-domain registrars a free-of-charge service to provide anycast secondary DNS for fi-domains and their holders.

Start using anycast secondary DNS for free and protect your customers’ domains now!

Traficom provides technical support for the service at fi-domain-tech@traficom.fi.
Tel. +358 295 345 656 (Mon-Fri, 9–15)