The larger your business gets, the more attention it receives. Common sense right? Well, the issue that’s been plaguing small businesses in recent years is actually a common mistake many business owners overlook when they begin expanding. Once you’ve achieved some popularity and a regular customer base, you start receiving larger volumes of traffic. Most businesses only look to optimize the front end of their website, but without a capable and reliable backend the whole system will collapse. The backend I’m talking about is DNS, the Domain Name System. This system allows for computers to communicate with each other and serves as the backbone of the internet… without it there would be no such thing as ecommerce or a selfie.
So what needs to change? If your business is reliant on ecommerce or has a large web presence, then you need a reliable and secure network to support your content. Seems simple, but what so commonly happens is business owners leave their DNS services to their web hosting providers or they attempt to host their DNS in-house. Both of these solutions have many downfalls that are easily corrected by seeking out an outsourced DNS provider.
Web hosting providers allow users to register their domain names and they commonly offer rudimentary DNS hosting. While these providers may promise fast speeds and a hands-off approach (automated services and minimal customizability) to DNS service, you’re lacking some pretty basic features such as Failover and Global Traffic Director. These services come standard with outsourced DNS providers and allow you set up fail safes in the event that your site goes down.
When it comes to in-house DNS systems, it may be comforting to a business owner to know that they have complete control over their query traffic and DNS servers. However, in-house systems are typically only as large as one or a few servers in one location. Outsourced DNS providers use massive networks that scale the entire globe. For example, DNS Made Easy has 14 PoPs, each with dozens of name servers, providing exponentially more levels of redundancy and reliability.
The best way to explain the difference between these three different types of networks is a common example that affects many businesses when they first start out. What happens is a company will have a basic website and they’ll host their DNS through a web hosting provider, which is fine to start out. However, once they launch their first big sale for the holiday season their site is flooded with an influx of traffic. If their DNS services aren’t up to par, their site will crash with no preconfigured backup system to keep it online. If the website is using an in-house DNS server, then what happens is what is commonly referred to as 10 pounds of flour in a 5 pound sack. Basically, the server can only handle so much traffic and will eventually fail when it becomes overloaded with queries. An outsourced IP Anycast+ network handles traffic differently. Using methods like Weighted Round Robin and the Global Traffic Director, an IP Anycast+ network can balance query traffic between PoPs and guarantee uptime with Failover protocols.
Once you’ve made the decision to outsource your DNS solutions, take the time to choose the right provider. It may take some extra research, but investing in the right provider can save you thousands in the long run and give you a higher ROI.
