Load Balancing – Definition

The network performance has become incredibly important. No matter if your organization is big or small, you don’t want to experience operational issues or network reliability problems. Load Balancing manages the demand by distributing the traffic and the application load over different servers depending on their current load.

It is not a new invention. In its early days, it was used between the end device and the application servers to check the servers and to send traffic to the least occupied.

But with the evolving of the networks, load balancing has gotten a new shape. Now it is not a simple distribution system. The load balancing has become very divided.

Here are some Load Balancing examples:

• There is application load balancer which distributes one single application over the servers; there is another which distributes only between the server cluster; another directs the traffic from multiple paths to a single destination.
• Other load balancing solutions are very advanced. They can shape the traffic and act as intelligent traffic switches, do different health checks on the content, applications, and servers, add extra security on the network and protect it from malicious software and improve availability.

Choosing load balancing is hard. You need to think about the demands on your networks and servers. You need 100% reliability on every part. If one component fails, this can lead to downtime.

Why Do You Need Load Balancing?

Load balancing is crucial for optimizing the performance, reliability, and scalability of your online services. Without it, a single server could become a bottleneck, causing downtime or even crashes during periods of high traffic. Load balancing helps distribute traffic efficiently across multiple servers, reducing the risk of server overloads and ensuring uninterrupted service. It also enhances user experience by providing faster response times and higher availability. Furthermore, load balancers help protect your infrastructure against DDoS attacks by distributing malicious traffic across multiple servers. It is particularly important for businesses with high traffic volumes or mission-critical services, as it can help maintain uptime and performance consistency. Another significant reason for adopting this mechanism is its scalability. As your website grows, adding more servers is a standard solution to manage the increased traffic load. Load balancing enables this growth by ensuring that new servers are smoothly integrated into your system without affecting overall performance.

How does it work?

Load balancing is achieved and managed with a tool or application that is called a load balancer. Despite the form of the load balancer (hardware or software), its main goal is to spread the network traffic among different servers and prevent overloading. 

Here are several steps which explain how load balancing works:

1. Your website receives traffic. Once users reach your website, they send a lot of requests to your server at the same time. 
2. The traffic is spread toward the server resources. The load balancer (hardware or software) intercepts and examines every request. Then, it directs it to the most suitable server node.
3. Every server works with a reasonable workload. The server node receives the request. When it is able to accept it, the server notifies the load balancer that it is not overloaded with too many requests.
4. The server answers the request. In order to complete the process, the server sends the response back to the user.

Whenever a user request arrives, the load balancer directs it to a precise server. The process repeats for every request. Load balancers are responsible for deciding which server is going to receive a precise request. That is determined based on different techniques for load balancing.

Types of Load Balancing

There are three appliances of Load Balancing – Physical, Virtual and Cloud-based.

Physical Appliance

This is the most traditional approach. The load balancer is placed right after the firewall and before the server cluster. Now you can expect the balancer to include more advanced functions like a built-in firewall and to be the all-in-one gatekeeper of the network.

There are other subtypes to the Physical. Some load balancers serve as caching devices, others like SSL accelerators or ADCs.

They are all physically present in the same data center as the application servers. The benefits that they provide are easy controlled and easy to connect and form bigger structures.

The negative part is that they are costly, you need to buy a lot of hardware and software to control them and lack geographical distribution.

Virtual Appliance

In the previous appliance, the main accent was put on hardware; here we don’t have a specific hardware. It runs on a virtual machine. This virtual machine provides the environment where the load balancing software works. It is a lot easier to apply because it can run on different computer configurations. It is cheap as well, and you can buy less expensive servers; the focus goes on the software, not on the hardware; it is easier to back up.

As for disadvantages, we can mention the problem with choosing a virtualization platform, and patches and upgrades can sometimes hurt the system.

Cloud-based Load Balancing

This is a convenient and robust solution for bigger networks. It is based on the cloud, and there it handles the load balancing and other functions like failover.

It manages interruptions, network problems, and outages far better and it can easily redistribute the traffic. Some other benefits of using Cloud-based Load Balancing are:

• Speed – it significantly reduces the response times and reduces the load on applications and web servers.
• Security – at load balancer level, DDoS attacks can be blocked and prevented.
• Low starting cost – you don’t need to buy software, nor expensive hardware. It is a service that you choose based on your current needs, and it is easily upgradable.

If you want to manage your DNS traffic (DNS requests) more efficiently, you can implement Load balancing in one of the following ways:

• Round Robin DNS

Round Robin DNS is a technique of load distribution, load balancing, or fault-tolerance provisioning multiple, redundant Internet Protocol service hosts (e.g. Web server, FTP servers), by managing the Domain Name System’s (DNS) responses to address requests from client computers according to an appropriate statistical model.

Round Robin DNS is often used to load balance requests between a number of Web servers. You can find more information regarding Round Robin DNS and how to use it here.

• GeoDNS

The GeoDNS service allows you to redirect your customers to specific IPs (servers) based on their geographic location. The service allows you to build your own CDN or to load balance your traffic. It is more accurate and smart than the Round-Robin. You can also set up different websites for each geolocation region. You can find detailed information regarding GeoDNS here.

Load Balancing Benefits

Load balancing is all about improving the management of network traffic and making the user experience better. Therefore, the benefits it provides are the following:

• Scalability: If you notice a drop or spikes in your traffic, you can easily increase or decrease the number of your servers to satisfy urgent requirements. That way, you can handle sudden massive amounts of requests. They usually appear, for instance, during a promotion or holiday sales.
• Redundancy: When you have the ability to maintain your website on multiple servers, you can ensure excellent uptime. Relying only on one web server hides a lot of risks that will force your visitors to leave your website. Load balancing is key if you can’t afford downtime.
• Flexibility: Load balancing gives you the ability to redirect traffic from one server to another. So that way, you have the flexibility to perform your regular maintenance work without disturbing the normal operations of your website.
• Avoid failures: Load balancing can be very helpful for avoiding failures. It spreads large amounts of traffic to the available servers and prevents outages. You can manage the servers efficiently and precisely. It is best if they are distributed across several data centers.
• DDoS attack protection: Spreading traffic across servers is also valuable when protecting against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Load balancing helps when a particular server gets flooded with malicious traffic by a DDoS attack. The traffic is forwarded to many servers rather than just one, and the attack surface is reduced. This way, load balancing eliminates single points of failure, and your network is resilient against such attacks.

Who can benefit from load balancing?

Here are the organizations and sectors that can benefit significantly from load balancing:

• Websites and E-commerce: Websites with high traffic, online retailers, and e-commerce platforms benefit from load balancing to ensure fast page loading, minimal downtime, and a seamless user experience.
• Cloud Service Providers: Companies offering cloud-based services rely on this technique to distribute workloads across servers, ensuring scalability and fault tolerance for their customers.
• Enterprises: Large enterprises use load balancing to evenly distribute network traffic across servers, preventing overloads, optimizing resource utilization, and maintaining system stability.
• Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): CDNs use the mechanism to efficiently deliver content to users, reducing latency and improving the delivery of multimedia, software updates, and web content.
• Gaming Industry: Online gaming companies utilize it to handle multiplayer game traffic, reduce lag, maintain game responsiveness, and ensure a smooth gaming experience.
• Healthcare and Telecommunications: Critical sectors like healthcare and telecom rely on load balancing for fault tolerance and high availability, ensuring that vital services remain accessible even during peak loads or server failures.
• Internet Service Providers (ISPs): ISPs can optimize network traffic, improving internet connectivity for their customers and efficiently managing the load.
• Government and Educational Institutions: These organizations employ load balancing to handle high volumes of traffic on their websites and online resources, ensuring accessibility and reliability.

Best Practices

When implementing the load balancing mechanism, it is important to follow the best practices, which are the following:

• Implement Health Checks

Always use health checks to monitor the status of your servers. Regular monitoring ensures that traffic is routed only to functioning servers, preventing requests from being sent to unresponsive or slow servers, which can negatively affect the user experience. Health checks allow your load balancer to automatically exclude problem servers and reintroduce them once they are back online.

• Select the Right Type of Load Balancer

Choosing the appropriate load balancer for your needs is key. Hardware, software, and cloud-based load balancers each offer different advantages. For small businesses, a cloud-based load balancer can offer flexibility and scalability, while enterprises with complex needs may benefit from physical or hybrid solutions. Consider your traffic type, load, and future growth when making a decision.

• Prioritize Redundancy and Failover Plans

Always ensure you have redundancy built into your load balancing setup. A backup or failover load balancer should be in place to take over in case the primary one fails. This ensures that traffic continues to flow smoothly even during server or network outages, thereby maintaining high availability for your users.

• Enhance Security

Load balancers are a frontline defense against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and other malicious traffic. By distributing traffic, they prevent bottlenecks that attackers aim to exploit. Implement DDoS protection strategies alongside load balancing, such as limiting excessive connections from a single source and setting up rate-limiting rules.

• Leverage Geo-based Load Balancing

For global businesses, using geo-based load balancing can significantly improve the user experience. This strategy directs users to the server closest to their geographic location, reducing latency and speeding up content delivery. By leveraging GeoDNS, businesses can ensure that customers experience fast, reliable service no matter where they are located.

• Monitor and Optimize Regularly

After setting up load balancing, ongoing monitoring and optimization are crucial to maintaining performance. Regularly assess traffic patterns, response times, and server health to ensure the configuration continues to meet your needs. Make adjustments as your infrastructure or traffic load changes to keep everything running smoothly.

Conclusion

As always you should know the needs of your organization to choose how exactly to implement the load balancing. Based on the advantages we recommend to start with a Cloud-based Load Balancing. You can sign up for free to use Round Robin DNS or if you want to use the more advanced GeoDNS service, you can find details about prices and features on our website.

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Understanding DNS

Before delving further into DNS plan types, let’s familiarize ourselves with what DNS really is.Each time you enter a web address into your browser, a DNS server translates that address into an IP address, guiding your request to the right web server. Simply put, the DNS is the phone book of the internet – converting human-readable domain names into machine-readable IP addresses.

Free DNS

Different companies offer such a Free DNS plan like us from ClouDNS. With this plan, you can manage your DNS. It has many of the features of a professional DNS plan. You can use up to 4 DNS servers and 1 DNS zone. You will have one mail forward. This plan is popular among people who need Dynamic DNS for their connected devices like CCTV cameras and other security measurements. It is used for personal blogs or parked domains.

Using this plan, the user can use all kinds of DNS records, including A, AAAA, MX, TXT and more. Something that is rarely found in such Free DNS plans is that we provide unlimited DNS queries. This can be a big plus.

It is a good plan for starters, who wants to learn using DNS. People who want to experiment and get how does the DNS work. It can be useful for small blog sites that still don’t get too much traffic. This kind of plans can’t offer the uptime of the Premium DNS plans so users of it, can experience occasional downtime and they are more vulnerable to DNS attacks.

Look how to add Free Zone in ClouDNS!

Premium DNS

Premium DNS plans have more of everything. They can use far more DNS servers and DNS zones. They can manage the traffic better. By using such a plan, you can see improvement in the loading speed, the security, better uptime and even better SEO.

DNS and SEO: How does DNS service affect SEO?

This kind of plans are for every website, that is more than just a personal blog with few monthly visitors. Every company that can’t afford to have downtime should choose a professional plan.

Premium DNS vs. Free DNS

When it comes to managing online data flow and protection, choosing the right type of Domain Name System (DNS) is crucial. Our comparison between Premium DNS and Free DNS will provide an understanding of the features, capabilities, and benefits that each service brings to your online activities.

• Better uptime – Our Premium DNS plans offer 60+ Anycast locations, up to 8 DNS name servers. You can also enjoy DDoS protection for maximum, SLA guaranteed, uptime. In case of a downtime, for each minute, we will extend your account with 10!

• More advanced features – Many more DNS zones and DNS records, unlimited queries, and many more mail forwards, DNSSEC, Reverse DNS zones, and more. Don’t forget DNS Failover and Monitoring checks.

• More DNS servers – Up to 8, depending on your plan. And up to 4 DDoS protected ones. They are strategically located around the world.

• Anycast DNS for better load balancing – Anycast is far superior technology in comparison with the older Unicast protocol. It manages queries a lot more efficiently. It provides the best route for each query to reduce latency.

• DDoS protection for extra security – DDoS attacks have been widespread for a while. They can completely cripple your network. ClouDNS offers 4 DDoS protected servers that can resist even heavy traffic.

• More DNS Zones – The free DNS plan that we offer has just 1 DNS zone that you can manage. The premium plans offer up to 400!

• Secondary DNS zones – You can use our Secondary DNS zones if you already have the master elsewhere. It is easy to set up, and it doesn’t take a long time. With Secondary DNS zones, you can improve the redundancy.

• More Mail Forwards – The free DNS plan has 1, but the premium plans have up to 1000.

• Real-time statistics – While the free plan provides statistics, it only on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis. If you want advanced real-time statistics that updates hourly check the premium plans.

How to Transition from a Free DNS Plan to Premium DNS with ClouDNS

Transitioning from a Free DNS plan to a Premium DNS plan on ClouDNS is a straightforward process that can significantly enhance your website’s performance, security, and reliability. Here’s how you can easily make the switch:

Step 1: Log into Your ClouDNS Account – Start by logging into your ClouDNS account. Use your existing credentials to access the dashboard where you manage your DNS settings.

Step 2: Locate the Upgrade Option – Once you’re logged in, look for the “Free” icon situated next to your email account at the top of the dashboard. This icon indicates your current Free DNS plan and provides a quick access point to upgrade.

Step 3: View Available DNS Hosting Plans – Clicking on the “Free” icon will bring up a list of all the DNS hosting plans that ClouDNS offers. This includes various Premium DNS plans tailored to different needs. Here, you can review the features and benefits of each plan to determine which one suits your requirements.

Step 4: Choose Your Plan Duration – After selecting the Premium DNS plan that fits your needs, you’ll be prompted to choose the duration of your subscription. ClouDNS offers multiple options, including 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years. Pick the period that best aligns with your budget and long-term plans.

Step 5: Complete the Purchase – Once you’ve selected your plan and duration, click on “Buy Now” to proceed to the checkout. You will need to fill out the required information to complete the payment process. ClouDNS supports various payment methods, making it convenient to finalize your purchase.

After completing the payment, your account will be upgraded to the Premium DNS plan. You can now take advantage of enhanced features such as better uptime, increased security, and improved DNS management tools.

Contextualizing your DNS needs: Factors to consider

Opting for either a free or Premium DNS service is not a decision to be taken lightly. While it’s tempting to choose the most economical option, it’s wise to weigh certain considerations to make an informed choice for your website’s long-term success:

1. Size and nature of your needs: Personal blogs and small websites usually don’t require the robust features of a Premium DNS, making a free DNS a reasonable choice. However, for larger websites or e-commerce platforms where downtimes mean lost revenue, Premium DNS services become indispensable for their reliability and stability.
2. Security concerns: Websites dealing with sensitive user data, especially eCommerce stores, need to prioritize their security features like DNSSEC, which often come with Premium DNS. 
3. Budget: Of course, budget plays a crucial role in your decision. Evaluate how much you are willing to invest in DNS services and if it aligns with your website’s requirements.
4. Traffic volume: If your website witnesses a significant volume of traffic, a Premium DNS with load balancing and faster routing can dramatically improve the user experience. 
5. Scalability: If you foresee quick expansion and growth for your website, investing in a Premium DNS service could provide the scalability you will eventually require.

Why does your choice of DNS matter?

Your choice of DNS acts as the vehicle driving the smooth operation of your website. It’s not just about translating a domain name to an IP address; it’s about ensuring your website can efficiently connect with users around the world.

• Speed: The performance speed of your DNS can significantly affect your website’s loading speed. In an era where waiting an extra second can lead to visitors abandoning your site, a faster DNS lookup can make a considerable difference.
• Uptime: Imagine owning a physical store but randomly closing several times a day – definitely not good for business, right? That’s essentially what website downtime is. A reliable DNS server ensures maximum uptime for your website, leading to consistent user experience and potentially higher revenue.
• Security: An insecure DNS can expose your website to cyber-attacks, leading not only to potential revenue loss through downtime but also damage to your brand reputation. A secure DNS can act as your frontline defense against cyber threats.

Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons to choose a Premium DNS over a Free DNS plan. Think about your needs, how much traffic are you expecting and how important is the uptime for your business. If you are not sure, you can start with a Free DNS or a cheap plan and slowly upgrade with the time. But if you know your business needs our sales team is here to meet your requirements. Just fill the form and our Sales representative will contact you as soon as possible.

The post Can we use free DNS? Free DNS vs. Premium appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

Here we will show you some good practices to manage your DNS. Prevention is the best defense. Pay attention to these pieces of advice and take action.

Hide the master DNS

Configure the master DNS as a hidden. Like this, it will not be shown in the records of the name server. It will not appear, and it will not respond to any queries. Its purpose will be to give zone transfers to secondary name servers which will be public but doing it safely and hidden.

Secured Access

Make the connection between the master DNS and the secondary name servers secured. Use ACLs (access control lists) and TSIGs (Transaction signatures). Like this, your secondary servers won’t be fooled, and your network won’t get corrupted.

Disable recursion

Do this on the external servers and reduce the risk for your authoritative servers to be part of DNS attacks like DNS Amplification.

Add rate limits

Even if you disabled the recursion on your authoritative DNS servers, they still could be used in DNS Amplification attacks with your domain names. To mitigate the options of the DNS attackers, you can add rate limits. If you are using bind software, here is an example configuration you can add to the options clause to set rate limit from 2 queries per second on average for each IPv4 class C (/24) network:

rate-limit {
responses-per-second 2;
ipv4-prefix-length 24;
slip 1;
};

Don’t show all information

The information about the version of your DNS software is for you. Don’t make it public. If hackers know it, they can use it against you by exploiting the particular vulnerabilities that the software might have. For example, if you are using bind software you can add a version in the options clause like this:

version “unknown”;

Place content (web) servers where your customers are

Be smart and think about your users. Place name servers where your clients need them the most. It will reduce the latency and improve the experience for your users. It will also minimize the load on your other servers, give you extra protection, and it will reduce the chance of failure. If you have multiple target markets in different locations (for example EU and the US), you can use GeoDNS service to direct the customers to the right servers which are closer to them.

Anycast DNS

Use Anycast DNS for your business. This will make the experience for your users, faster and better. It will dramatically reduce the time to load the first page of your website, which helps your SEO significantly. It makes it more resilient, making it harder to experience a down time and more protected from DDoS attacks because of the different points of presence.

Use DNSSEC

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) provide an additional layer of security on top of your DNS. This DNS best practice prevents a certain kind of attack where the attacker intercepts and potentially alters the DNS queries and responses. DNSSEC ensures that the users are communicating with the intended website or service, and not a malicious version of it. However, it’s important to note that DNSSEC can be complex to implement and manage and should be thoroughly tested before deployment.

Monitor DNS traffic

Keep an eye on your DNS traffic. Unusual patterns or a sudden increase in DNS queries could signal a security breach or a DDoS attack. By leveraging monitoring services and implementing alert systems, organizations can quickly identify and mitigate any unusual DNS activity, minimizing the impact of potential threats.

Control the traffic with DNS filtering

An excellent defence against viruses, spyware, and other malicious traffic is to block it before it can infiltrate your network. That’s where DNS filtering comes in. This technique control and restrict access to specific websites or content based on DNS queries. By implementing it, organizations can proactively prevent access to malicious or inappropriate websites, reducing the risk of malware infections, data breaches, and other cyber threats.

Keep log files

Maintaining logs of DNS server activity is another crucial DNS practices for security incident response and forensic analysis. These logs provide valuable information about DNS queries and responses, allowing organizations to identify and investigate security incidents. By analyzing the logs, organizations can understand the nature of the incident, track the source of the attack, and take appropriate measures to mitigate the impact. Additionally, DNS logs help meet compliance requirements, facilitate audits, and optimize network performance.

Use Geographical DNS for Load Balancing

Implement Geographical DNS (GeoDNS) to optimize the distribution of user traffic based on geographic locations. By directing users to the nearest or least loaded server, GeoDNS reduces latency and enhances the user experience. This approach not only improves response times but also helps in managing traffic loads more efficiently across distributed networks. Additionally, GeoDNS can be configured for failover mechanisms, rerouting traffic seamlessly in case of server downtime, thereby increasing the reliability of services.

Regularly audit your DNS configuration

Regularly reviewing and auditing your DNS configuration can help you identify and fix any misconfigurations or security vulnerabilities. The audit should cover all aspects of the DNS setup, including checking for unnecessary open zones, ensuring correct IP address mapping, and validating DNS record settings.

Free DNS audit tool

Conclusion

These are some of the most recommended DNS practices. While there will be new threats, many of the DNS attacks happening these days can be evaded. No matter if your network is small or large, try to keep it safe and protected, by following our recommendations. Restrict access to some parts of the network, and remember that well-designed infrastructure is vital to your digital presence.

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Explanation of Traffic Director 

Traffic director is a way to optimize and manage the traffic going to your domain by using geographical-based routing. Like this, your clients from Asia will get connected to your Asian servers; your European clients will connect to the closest servers they have in Europe and so on.
Traffic Director is a cloud-based implementation of Load Balancing (you can check our article on Load Balancing). It helps to improve the performance of your network. It can be incredibly useful for medium and large companies that need to deliver content to different parts of the world.

Some companies call this service traffic director, others Global Traffic Director (GTD) or GeoDNS director, but it is best known as GeoDNS, and that is why we use this term as the name of our service.

How does it perform?

Traffic Director gives you easy access to a powerful global load-balancing system by making configuration easy. All you need to do is set your own regional rules, and the Traffic Director will intelligently direct DNS queries through strategically-placed nameservers.

ClouDNS enables you to optimize your query traffic with custom regionalization, allowing you to divide traffic across six global regions:

• Africa
• Asia
• Europe
• North America
• Oceania
• South America

By leveraging Traffic Director, you can ensure your site visitors have a better experience. For example, through regionalized configurations, queries are redirected to the geographically closest nameservers, meaning Chicago visitors would be answered by a nameserver in the North American region rather than relying on a Asia or even overseas-based server.

In addition, If you want to ensure users from France, for example, receive the best possible experience, the Traffic Director can help you achieve this. Its regionalized configurations enable you to specify that all DNS queries from the country-based region (France) should be answered by a server located in Paris. This means you can ensure users are connected to the closest, most efficient nameserver. 

DNS lookups are the first step in making any DNS request. In order to produce the best user experience, DNS traffic must be routed efficiently and with purpose. If it is not handled optimally, it can lead to poor performance and contribute to a degraded user experience. By using a Traffic Director, you can ensure users get the speedy, reliable performance they deserve.

Typical DNS vs. Anycast vs. GeoDNS

Typically, you will have few DNS servers. A visitor trying to connect will ask at random one of them for your web server’s IP address. The visitor will be lucky if the server is close and not so happy if it is far away, but he or she will get the same IP address.
If you are using just an Anycast, multiple servers will respond to the same IP. With it, the visitor will get a response from the topologically closest nameserver. The reaction is quick, but it still can take time to connect to the web server if it is far away.
Here comes the GeoDNS/Traffic Director and its advantages. By using it, a visitor will get a different IP address, depending on his/her location. It will result in fast DNS query response and consequently fast connection to the web server.

Why should you get a Traffic Director/GeoDNS?

Multiple Geolocation target options

You can efficiently target regions, countries or whole continents. You can create an exact Geolocation load balancing. Filter your visitors and direct them to the servers which are closest.

Well-placed servers
We have located our servers close to high traffic international locations.

ClouDNS network is continuously growing. We have currently 50+ Anycast DNS locations on six continents for faster DNS query resolving.

DDoS Protected DNS
DDoS attacks are becoming a common threat. For your convenience and safety, our GeoDNS plans include DDoS Protection.
DDoS attacks and how to protect ourselves

Cost Effective
Although our plans include a limited amount of queries per month, we won’t charge you extra or temporarily stop your DNS if you get additional traffic in a month or two. If this trend continues for a more extended period, we will just propose a more suitable plan for your needs.

EDNS-client/subnet support
Our service makes decisions based on the real locations of the visitors, not on those of the DNS resolver.

SEO friendly
One of the most important factors of SEO is the speed. Thanks to the Network System of servers, the DNS queries will be resolved faster, and this will help you have higher SEO ranking.

Who can benefit from using Traffic Director?

Traffic Director, with its advanced load balancing and network traffic management capabilities, can provide significant advantages for a wide range of industries and sectors. Here are some key entities and scenarios where a Traffic Director can be highly beneficial:

• Large Enterprises and Corporations: Companies with large online operations, such as those in e-commerce, financial services, and digital media, can highly benefit from Traffic Director. It ensures that their websites and applications can handle massive traffic volumes efficiently, improving user experience and minimizing downtime during peak periods.
• Cloud Service Providers: Providers that offer cloud computing resources and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) can use Traffic Director to manage and distribute traffic across their data centers more effectively. That way, it enhances performance and reliability and optimizes resource utilization, leading to cost efficiency.
• Telecommunications Companies: Telecom operators can use a Traffic Director to manage the vast amounts of data passing through their networks. By efficiently routing traffic, they can enhance the quality of service for their subscribers and reduce the load on network infrastructure.
• Online Gaming and Entertainment: In industries where customer satisfaction is closely tied to the responsiveness and stability of the service, like online gaming, Traffic Director is a game-changer. It plays a crucial role in managing sudden spikes in traffic and maintaining a seamless user experience.
• Global Businesses: For businesses operating across multiple geographical locations, the Traffic Director helps implement global load balancing. That way, it ensures that users worldwide receive quick and reliable access to their services.

Conclusion

GeoDNS or Traffic Director as some call it can significantly improve your DNS network. Your visitors will be happy, connecting faster to your website and you can even deliver them different content depending on their location. GeoDNS is an excellent solution for media companies who need to provide high-quality content to different users from all around the world as fast as possible.

The post What is Traffic Director? appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

How does a CDN work?

To shorten the physical distance between the users and the hosting server, the CDN keeps cached versions of the original content in different geographical locations known as Points of Presence (PoP). Each of these PoPs is located strategically to serve to the users nearby.
This way, you as a user, don’t need to connect to the original source (the original server). The CDN will direct you to the closest connected server on the network, and you will get the cached version of the original version.

The benefits of a CDN

• The most obvious is the speed. The content loads faster. According to recent tests from the Content Delivery Network KeyCDN, using a CDN reduces website latency on average by 73% compared to websites running without a CDN.
• Handle heavy traffic. The load is handled between the PoPs and it is not so heavy for the original server.
• It reduces the bandwidth consumption.
• It is more secure and protects you from DDoS attacks, more Points of Presence (PoPs), fewer chances of your original server to be affected.
• Faster loading time will improve the SEO of the website.
• There are more benefits but these are the main. Based on these advantages, the CDNs are getting more and more popular every day. Especially for E-commerce and Entertainment.

Do I need a CDN for my website?

The internet has become quite dependent on Content Delivery Network to manage a significant amount of its content. But just because CDNs are a common practice doesn’t mean you need to consider investing in one. It’s necessary to understand how CDN DNS works and consider whether it’d be useful for your website’s needs.

CDNs are great for allowing users to access web content quickly and efficiently, even if they’re far away from where your web origin host is located. If most of your audience is nearby and can effectively access your website without much difficulty, then you may not need a CDN for your website. However, if you’re reaching a larger audience from different places, then it would be wise to invest in a CDN service. Video streaming websites, social media platforms, online journalism outlets, digital publications and eCommerce sites all benefit from having their own CDN, because it makes it easier for them to reach a larger global audience. It also allows for faster loading, which can provide more potential visitors and more potential readers. 

Overall, the advantages of a fast-loading website far outweigh the costs, and should not be ignored.

Does DNS need to be modified to support CDN?

Yes, DNS must be modified to support CDN. Domain Name System (DNS) stores, logs and allocates the IP address of your web content between web users and your web server, so any change in web content needs to be reflected in the underlying DNS record. CDN, on the other hand, adds multiple distributed server networks to reduce the amount of time needed for content to travel from the origin to the final destination. In order for these different distributed networks to work effectively, the DNS must be configured to route requests through the CDN, which allows for quicker content delivery and reduced latency. Furthermore, CDNs also use DNS to direct visitors geographically to their nearest server, which helps reduce the time it takes for the web content to load on their browser.

How to create your own CDN using DNS

To set up a CDN using your own Anycast can be very expensive. But don’t worry, there are cheaper solutions. For example, you can use GeoDNS and ordinary servers with unique IP addresses. With our GeoDNS service you can build your own CDN or Geolocation Load Balancing with highly accurate geolocation service that makes the decisions based on the real location of the visitor, not on the location of the DNS resolver. You can easily configure your DNS zone to show American server IP to the visitors from The USA and to the European visitors, another IP from Europe.
It might sound hard to you but don’t worry, we can help you. Our professional team of experts can provide you directions and you can start benefiting from your CDN in no time. Give it in our hands and we will do all the configuration needed.

So what are you waiting for? Make the experience for your visitors better and faster. Segment your traffic and send users to the servers designed just for them. This can increase their happiness and make them more likely to engage and convert.

The post How to create your own CDN using DNS appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

What are the DDoS attacks

Cybercriminals are hijacking many random connected devices around the world. The already corrupted devices are called botnets, it is a network that is waiting for instructions from the person in control. The hacker can instruct them to generate traffic to a specific target. The massive number of those devices cripples the defense of the target and brings it down.

Spamhaus 2013

Back in 2013 this was the biggest attack of its time. The website of anti-spam company Spamhaus was down on 18.03.2013 due to a large layer 3 attack. Their servers couldn’t manage the load. The attack was around 75Gbps and back then this was unimaginable (currently there are some with more than 600Gbps). They manage to stop it by signing for Anycast service.

BBC DDoS Attack 2015

A few years ago, on October 21st, 2016, the DNS provider Dyn was struck by a massive DDoS attack. Their servers were down, and for some time, big websites that they were hosting like Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit and more were out. The culprit of the attack was a botnet called Mirai which was made mostly from IoT devices. The attack had a cascading effect on internet services globally, drawing attention to the vulnerabilities inherent in centralized DNS providers and spurring investment in DDoS mitigation technologies.

Dyn DDoS attack 2016

A few years ago, on October 21st, 2016, the DNS provider Dyn was struck by a massive DDoS attack. Their servers were down, and for some time, big websites that they were hosting like Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit and more were out. The guilty of the attack was a botnet called Mirai which was made mostly from IoT devices.

Kerbs on Security 2016

In September 2016 just before the Dyn accident, there was another involving the Mirai botnet. The attack was very strong at around 665 Gbps, but that to the Kerbs’s security, they manage to resist it.

The Mirai botnet responsible for the attack was especially alarming for its utilization of Internet of Things (IoT) devices like cameras and routers. This marked one of the first times a botnet had so effectively leveraged commonly used household devices to orchestrate a large-scale DDoS attack.

Blizzard DDoS attack 2017

If you are a gamer, you probably know Blizzard Entertainment, the brand behind Overwatch, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. This company has experienced many attacks over the last years. Most noticeable was in August 2017. Many gamers were unable to connect to their server and play. These attacks are damaging the image of the company and the satisfaction of their clients.

Memcached attacks of March 2018

March was a horrible month. We saw new attacks with a larger than ever before scale. There were two that set a record, the one that hit Arbor Networks with 1.7Tbps traffic and the other that hit GitHub with 1.35Tbps a few days earlier. They both exploited the UDP port 11211. The UDP doesn’t use verification and that is the reason this was possible.

DDoS amplification attacks by Memcached

The different attacks of 2019

In 2019 we didn’t see huge attacks with +1Tbps power, but it wasn’t safe either. 

Yes, there were some strong attacks of around 0.5 Tbps, but we paid attention more to the number of packets per second. In this kind of attack, the criminals do a little work, and the target does a lot of work. This is why they are called asynchronous. The attackers send small packets and receive big ones. The processing occupies the target’s resources. 

Clients of Imperva had a rough start of the year. First, a strong attack of 500 million packets a second in January. It was considered one of the largest PPS (Packets Per Second) attacks known.

Later, on the 30th of April 2019, another client of theirs got attacked with 580 million PPS.

In September 2019, there was another strong attack that was targeting Wikipedia. The popular site didn’t provide information about the magnitude of the attack, but it was down for several hours on different continents.

The AWS Attack 2020

Amazon Web Services (AWS) fell prey to a DDoS attack in February 2020, which peaked at 2.3 terabits per second. The attack was of the Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) Reflection type, a common DDoS attack method that amplifies the traffic. Despite the intensity, Amazon successfully mitigated the attack, preventing any significant interruption to its services.

Cloudflare Attack 2020

In August 2020, Cloudflare, a leading DDoS mitigation service, experienced a significant DDoS attack itself. Peaking at 754 million packets per second, it became one of the largest PPS-focused DDoS attacks in history. Remarkably, Cloudflare was able to thwart the attack in seconds using automated systems. However, the incident underscored the evolving complexity of DDoS attacks, showing that even cybersecurity specialists are not immune.

2023 Trends

What can we expect this year? 

• Attacks with a smaller bandwidth, but intense with a high PPS number. The cybercriminals are changing their strategies.

• Increase in the duration of the attacks. Some, they can go for weeks. DDoS protection solutions should be able to withstand longer than before.  

• More sophisticated attacks. It is not just about the volume anymore. For example, the exploit can happen through a different port. 

• More botnets are emerging. There is already a new version of Mirai, new botnet Cayosin, and the IoT number of devices is increasing, and with this, the number of botnet devices.

According to Cisco’s projections, the global landscape for DDoS attacks is expected to witness a significant escalation, with the number of attacks doubling to approximately 15.4 million by 2023. This alarming surge underscores the growing threat of cyberattacks and emphasizes the imperative for organizations to fortify their cybersecurity measures to safeguard against this evolving menace. Since 2018, DDoS attacks have become increasingly prevalent, highlighting the pressing need for proactive defense strategies in the digital realm.

Source: Cisco Annual Internet Report, 2018–2023

How to protect from DDoS attacks?

You can use a DDoS protected DNS plan. Such a plan will include different DDoS protected servers and many Anycast locations. This will do a load balancing that will help you reduce the traffic and spread it to different servers. This way the intense wave of traffic can be reduced and your servers can withstand the DDoS attack.

Protect from DDoS attacks!

Conclusion

The DDoS attack won’t stop, nor will they be lighter. If your business demands your website to be up 100% of the time, you better be prepared with the right security measures.

The post Most significant DDoS attacks in the recent years (UPDATED 2023) appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

By choosing to cooperate with a Managed DNS provider like us, you can take advantage of a vast DNS network with many points of presence. You will provide a faster service and more secure too. Increase the redundancy by partnering with us.
You will be free of constantly checking your DNS servers and be worry that they might go down. Your clients will be delighted by the results.

Speed Boost

Creating hosting plans with Managed DNS will give them significant speed boost in comparison with the competition. With many servers around the globe and extra services like GeoDNS, you can handle heavy traffic from different locations. You can provide service for heavy purposes like video streaming.

DDoS protected DNS

Our sizeable DNS network is very resisting to DDoS attacks. For extra security, we provide DDoS Protected DNS too. By using DDoS Protected name servers, you can lower the downtime significantly by protecting your domain name.

Cloud-based infrastructure

This gives you the possibility to monitor the DNS zones status live. Adding additional DNS is allowed easily, and it is instant. The synchronization across the points of presence happens simultaneously.

Seamless integration with hosting services

You can add Managed DNS to your hosting easily without bothering any of your core services. Your clients will just enjoy one extended service, which outperforms the rest of the hosting provider in the price range.

Customer service

Our Technical staff will quickly respond to any situation. We will help with any DNS related problem. We will help you with all your questions about the integration of our Managed DNS service with your hosting one.

Low operational cost

By creating a partnership with us, you will be able to provide DNS services without actually buying all the needed hardware. You won’t need additional servers and many more staff members to execute such a solution. This will keep your costs low but increase the value of your services.

We already have started to cooperate with different hosting providers. They have seen significant performance improvement at a very affordable price. ClouDNS.net would like to continue building such relationship that benefits both parties. Please contact us to learn more how you can implement Managed DNS in your own company.

The post Why should you implement Managed DNS in your hosting company? appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

Australia DNS to improve speed

The Internet may be slow, but there is something that you can do, use a Premium DNS. DNS is a system that resolves your domain. It helps to translate the request for a domain, for example, Google.com, to its actual IP address (for example 216.58.208.1). It is a backbone of the Internet.  How can this make the speed of your website faster? To do that well, servers need to be fast. Another critical factor is the physical distance.

For all the requests that are coming from Australians, you can use a local data center. Like this, all the requests will be answered faster from that local DNS server and your website visitors will get the IP address of your site in milliseconds. ClouDNS manages to do this fast by using the Anycast technology that gives results from the shortest route.

Sydney – SIS Group Data Center Australia DNS

In Australia, we work with SIS Group Data Center to provide a spectacular DNS service on the continent.

SIS Group Sydney Data Center is a high speed redundant world-class facility. It is well equipped to handle any data requirement. It is located just 4km from the central business district of Sydney. The data center is well controlled to ensure excellent performance. It also has a superb connection with the most significant data centers in Sydney through a dark fiber.

Conclusion

Using a Premium DNS will be very beneficial to your website visitors. It will cut down the time that it takes for them to connect to your site. It is easy to use, and it gives excellent results. Just try it out!

The post Australia DNS, use DNS to provide better service appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

1. Choose a good web hosting

As we said earlier, speed is essential. Choosing a good web hosting is not easy. Many of the web hosting companies don’t show all of the information to the public, so you need to ask extra. The most important aspects are that the servers are modern, that they use SSD, they give you enough resources for you (what percentage of the shared resources are you getting), physical location and of course the price. The web hosting might be the most significant investment so take your time.

2. Use a barebone theme

Barebone WordPress theme might be a bit contra logical to you but bear with us for a moment. Yes, a barebone theme will be less spectacular, but again our primary concern is speed. It will load a lot faster and give you an advantage in the Google ranking. You need to be sure that the theme is mobile-friendly too. This is a very cheap update.

3. Optimize images

And this one is entirely free! Use a compressed format like .JPG for your images and keep the resolution down. You don’t need a full 20Mpx image, especially when most of the internet traffic comes from mobile with an average 1080p display. Use 1MPx image and your pages will load fast and still provide a quality post for your visitors. For the resizing, you can use an online site or download a image resizing application on your device.

4. Speed up WordPress using caching plugin

There are free and paid options. We recommend you WP Super Cache. This one creates static HTML files that most of your visitors will see instead of the WordPress PHP scripts. Html is lighter and easier to load.

5. Use CDN

You can create your own CDN (content delivery network) using DNS. It will give you the chance to have many more point of presence in the world. Like this, your users from China will be redirected from the servers close to them in Asia and the ones in The US will have others close by. It will significantly reduce the time to load for your page, and you can use it with all of the previous speed up WordPress tips.

If you are interested, you can check our GeoDNS or talk to our sales team that can give you extra details.  It is relatively inexpensive, and it gives excellent results.

Conclusion

To be one step ahead of your competitors is not easy, but with good research and some tweaks, you can get far better results. Some of these speed up WordPress optimizations cost extra money, but when you see the difference in reach and positioning you will be content.

The post 5 tips to speed up WordPress website appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.

Who can join this reselling program?

Many can benefit from it, but mostly it can add extra value to your hosting or domain business. You can seamlessly integrate our DNS services to your product portfolio and resell DNS. Thanks to the API that we provide, every business function is easily accessible and fully flexible.

Resell DNS services of the following:

Through our platform, you can resell three types of services: Premium DNS, DDoS Protected DNS and GeoDNS and the different monthly subscriptions that we have.
Premium DNS with unlimited DNS records and DNS queries per month, 8 DNS servers around the world, 50+ Anycast locations, up to 400 DNS zones and up to 1,000 mail forwards
https://www.cloudns.net/premium/

DDoS Protected DNS with unlimited DNS records and DNS queries per month, 4 DDoS Protected DNS servers around the world, 50+ Anycast locations, up to 400 DNS zones and up to 1,000 mail forwards and 10 000% Uptime Guarantee.
https://www.cloudns.net/ddos-protected-plans/

GeoDNS with up to 10 DNS zones, up to 10 000 Records and 1 000 000 000 DNS queries per month
You can check the full descriptions of the services here
https://www.cloudns.net/geodns/

Easy to Integrate

Another advantage is the secure connection over HTTPS. It is the secure version of the HTTP protocol that sends data between the browser and the website. The data will be private and encrypted.

HTTP vs HTTPS

Our interface lets you use all the management and selling functionalities in a very intuitive way. Every menu will be where you think it will be.
In case of a problem, you can contact our dedicated team of API specialist that will help you find the solution to your problem in no time.
About the selling functionalities, we assure you that we support via ticket system. This will ease your management.

Completely Platform Independent

Resell DNS no matter what platform  do you use. This means that you can use it under whatever operating system you have – Windows, OSX, Linux, ChromeOS or another. The browser is also not an issue; we work with standards compliant HTTP API. And to be truly platform independent, you can still program in any programing language that you like.

Secure and Scalable

We have taken different measures to protect our system and to provide a safe experience to all of you, our customers. In addition to the HTTPS protocol that we use, we protect from API abuses and DDoS Attacks; we have an advanced monitoring system to check for threats and extra level of protection, a restricted access through whitelisted IPs. Only the approved IPs have access.

Suggested page: Explanation of Web (HTTP/HTTPS) monitoring

For your convenience, you can use our WHMCS module https://www.cloudns.net/whmcs-module/.

Through it, you easily offer ClouDNS services to your clients. It supports versions 5, 6 and 7. The module is open source, and it is entirely free and customizable.

ClouDNS makes it easy for you and provides you a control panel for all your needs. You can manage and check all of your activities on it. https://panel.cloudns.net

How to start our DNS resell Program?

You are already thinking of how to add ClouDNS services to your portfolio and increase the value for your clients. Luckily it is effortless to start our reselling program.
Just click this link https://www.cloudns.net/resellers-api/, fill your data, choose the service you would like to resell and wait until our team gets back to you.
Your request will be quickly reviewed, and you will start benefit from the reselling program in no time.

The post How to resell DNS services? Add DNS to your product portfolio. appeared first on ClouDNS Blog.