Why Premium DNS hasn't been able to be used anymore

There's a good chance you've heard the phrase "premium DNS" used before, but perhaps you did not give much thought to it. The majority of people realize the benefits of a top DNS service can benefit their company, however they're not sure how to make it happen or don't know how.

•       What is DNS?
•       The DNS attack that affected the Internet in all its entirety
•       Premium DNS Provider Benefits
•       How do I Set Up Premium DNS

What is DNS?

If you're committed to your website or business, we strongly recommend that you use a top DNS provider that we'll explain in greater detail below.

This was it. The DNS Attack that Affected the Entire Internet

In essence, what occurred was that they took Dyn's DNS servers offline, and like we've previously explained when they weren't, DNS lookups start to stop. Dyn was able to report the problem on their official Status page and was able to provide constant update throughout the entire attack that took around 11 hours.

We are working to minimize the impact of the impact of DDoS to the managed DNS system. For more information visit our status page.

October 21 October, 2016.

Here is an example of what one Dynatrace's SaaS customers was experiencing on the 21st of Friday, using their DNS monitoring application. The attack was targeted at the East Coast but it rippled throughout all of the United States and Europe.

In light of the events that have occurred, businesses must reevaluate their approach to managing DNS. The idea of setting up a backup DNS service as a backup could provide redundant services when problems like those one mentioned above occur. We should at the very least consider using a premium DNS service, as opposed to free services since they're more equipped to deal with these problems. While attacks of this magnitude aren't common, DDoS attacks in general aren't seen as. According to information provided by easyDNS, DDoS attacks over the last few years are getting more and more serious.

As of the time I wrote this post on the 31st of October the 123 Reg domain registrar, one of the largest domain registrars, was fighting with an DDoS attack on their DNS. As time passes, the number of DDoS attacks to grow.

Premium DNS Provider Benefits

There are many good free DNS providers out there However, premium DNS providers can provide a wide range of advantages to make sure that your website is always up and running, such as security, DNS failover, and higher speed.

1. Security is better prepared to handle Massive-Scale attack

High-end DNS providers that offer a higher-end service tend to be more secure from huge-scale DDoS attacks, such as the one on Friday the 21st. Dyn is an extremely well-known company and, even when there was a disruption in the service they made their greatest they were able to do in order to keep customers updated and worked through every hour to restore all services back online. Keep in mind that the attack was the biggest ever recorded with 600 Gb/sec. If the same event was a case of a free or less popular DNS service, you're safe to assume that it would have resulted in even more catastrophic for its clients.

Scott, EVP at Dyn issued an official announcement on the 26th of October:

The incident has led to an important discussion about internet security , and the possibility of volatility. It has not only revealed security weaknesses and security of "Internet of Things" (IOT) equipment that need to be addressed it also ignited a new discussions within the world of internet infrastructure about how the Internet changes in the coming years. Similar to what we've done before, we look at contributing to this dialog.

2. Failover DNS Strategie

The companies of today need to rethink their DNS strategy and put a failover established. Brian Armstrong, co-founder at Canopy, wrote a great article in 2014 that read " You're probably doing DNS wrong, as we were." The article came out after an DDoS attack caused the downfall of their DNS provider, DNSimple. Armstrong discusses the subject of TTLs and proposes that organizations should consider making longer TTLs. TTL means the time it takes to live that is, the amount of time it can remain intact in caches until it's cleaned. If, for instance, you have a TTL of a week and your DNS provider went down for a day the odds are that the users will not suffer as the DNS cache from your ISP maintains your DNS the cache.

Want to know the steps we took to boost the number of visitors we receive by 1,000 per cent?

Join over 20,000 people who get our weekly newsletter that contains insider WordPress advice!

There is however another benefit to using large TTLs. On the 21st of May If you decided to set up a second DNS service, the time would not really matter since the TTL was set to expire over several weeks, or even days instead of minutes. There is a way to remedy this by simply creating multiple DNS providers prior to preparation. So yes, high TTLs can be helpful, however they should be used in conjunction with a multi DNS failure-over strategy. Check out this more in-depth study of DNS TTLs setting.

Everyone in the community should work together in order to come up with Open source or commercial solutions to ensure DNS configurations are compatible with different providers (this is for difficult DNS setups like failover, geo load balancing or geo load balancers.). It's now not just an attractive feature to possess and is a must have. - - - Catchpoint

There are numerous leading DNS providers with tutorials for setting up secondary DNS to serve as a failover. It is recommended to establish redundant nameservers with multiple DNS providers.

• Secondary DNS that includes Dyn
• Second DNS using DNS made Simple
• Primary DNS with DNSimple
• A secondary DNS service using simpleDNS (and Amazon Route 53)

It is also essential to be aware that based on how you set up the second DNS it could affect or increase the speed for your DNS. DNS Made Simple has an excellent webinar that explains this issue a bit further.

3. Performance

We have conducted some tests using the SolveDNS test performance tool. Here's an example a domain with NameCheap's DNS free and the response times.

FREE NameCheap DNS

And below is an example of Amazon Route 53's premium DNS. It is evident that, typically, DNS lookup times are significantly faster when using Amazon. You are able to conduct yourself tests on several DNS providers. However, it's essential to be aware that , similar to web hosts. there are faster ones as well as slower. A majority of the more expensive DNS providers have faster speeds. Cloudflare is one of the free ones that also has great performance, however, they are tricky when you get into running multiple DNS providers.

 Amazon Route 53 DNS

How do you configure Premium DNS With

We think that premium DNS is crucial and that is why we partnered up together with Amazon Route 53, a world-wide Anycast network. They offer DNS failure-over, latency and geolocation routing, which helps ensure that your website is always online and reliable. The routing is especially important since it guarantees that your DNS is sent to the location with lowest latency. Amazon Route 53 premium DNS is completely free to all. To set it up on your WordPress site, comply with the instructions below.

Step 1

In your My dashboard click into " DNS."

Step 2.

Click "Add Domain" at the upper right.

Step 3.

• A
• CNAME
• MX
• SPF
• TXT
• SRV
• AAAA
• DKIM

Step 4

It is then necessary to connect Amazon's nameservers with the registry of your domain or a an alternative third-party DNS service provider. These are accessible by clicking into Nameservers from the DNS records page.

This is all there is to it! Your DNS has been served by Amazon Route 53.

Summary

Similar to Catchpoint in a similar way like EVP in Dyn which was mentioned in the past, this latest incident has companies rethinking their DNS strategies and the security of websites in general. Many companies suffered millions of dollars due to the disruption that took place on the 21st of Friday. Utilizing a leading DNS service, as well as using a DNS failover technique that uses an alternate service is more important as never before. It's just a matter of time before that next attack on DDoS occurs, and you should be prepared.

Are you thinking about the use of premium DNS service providers? If yes, then please add them in the remarks.

Save time, money, and improve site performance by:

• 24/7 helpline from WordPress Hosting experts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Cloudflare Enterprise integration.
• Global reach with 35 data centers across the globe.
• Optimization by using our integrated Application to monitor performance.

This post was first seen on here