Enterprise Mail and DNS Services with 100% uptime history

Starting in 2004 DNS Made Easy has upgraded it's network to an IP Anycast network. This network had been put into place for our Managed DNS services (when you use us as primary name server). Not only are all of DNS Made Easy's systems located at premium data facilities with multiple data providers, but now we have also upgraded our network to make DNS Made Easy in the top tier of DNS providers worldwide. Even though we had a 100% uptime history, we made improvements to make sure we keep it that way.

We are so proud of this achievement that we are including this page to explain to our users what IP Anycast Routing is and how it will benefit them.

IP Anycast Routing is an industry best practice to give servers the highest possible uptime. This routing will give our DNS servers the highest amount of uptime worldwide. This is of course what the largest web sites in the world use to keep working (ie. Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, etc.).

IP Anycast Routing gives systems: load balancing, increased reliability, decreased latency, and a true distributed response to DoS. The best part is that all of this is transparent to the client (the end user). By having multiple networks dynamically respond to the same IP you are able to increase performance and uptime.

What really is IP Anycast Routing? And how does it benefit me?

Unless you want to get really technical (which would bore most of us) the best way to understand IP Anycast Routing is with pictures.

NOTE: These pictures are designed just for informational purposes to explain how IP Anycast can be used to route DNS traffic. These pictures do not represent the DNS Made Easy network as we have systems in multiple continents.

Here is how a normal DNS network without IP Anycast.
This picture shows name servers that are geographically distributed. This is the minimum that your DNS provider should do. The truth is that most DNS providers do not even do this. Most DNS providers put all of their servers in the exact same city, some DNS providers are in the exact same facility!

Now let's assume that a natural disaster made 2 or 3 cities no longer reachable. Here is what your DNS network will look like now. Note that DNS resolution will now be forced to only 2 cities. It will take longer for your DNS to resolve as systems will be down and the remaining name servers may get flooded / overloaded.

Here is a DNS network works when it has IP Anycast Routing.
Note that multiple cities will be responding to the exact same IP (same name server). This gives you a decrease in latency as you will be connecting to the location closest to you (in regards to network latency). This also helps distribute any DoS as numerous cities will be responding to the exact same IP (name server).

Now in the worst case that a natural disaster has occurred and a couple cities are no longer available your DNS network will not be affected as you still have cities responding to the same IP (name server). This gives you the best possible protection against any problem (network / natural disaster / DoS / etc.).

Are there other DNS providers that provide the IP Anycast routing technology?
Sure there are, this is not a hidden technology that only we do. It is just a very costly network infrastructure to set up. Here are a list of some other providers that use IP Anycast Routing: