Build vs Buy: DNSDeploying a scalable DNS foundation for your Internet PerformanceCory von WallensteinChief Technologist@cvwdyn

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But first, some clarity on business strategy…

Exploring two paths for Internet Performance:• Building your own DNS infrastructure for Traffic Management

• Buying a Traffic Management & Managed DNS solution

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Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Techies:Just try it!

Pragmatists:Stick with the herd!

Conservatives:Stick with what’s proven!

Skeptics:Just say No!

Visionaries:Get ahead of the herd!

From Geoffrey Moore’s Dealing with Darwin

CHAS

M

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MatureMarket

CGrowthMarket

B

Time

Mar

ket G

row

th

ADecliningMarket

End of Life

FaultLine!

E

D

From Geoffrey Moore’s Dealing with Darwin

Category Lifecycle

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Core vs ContextCore: Any process that contributes directly to competitive advantage.

Context: All other processes required to fulfill commitments made to one or more stakeholders in the enterprise.

From Geoffrey Moore’s Dealing with Darwin

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How to Win in the Long TermFocus internal time, attention and resources on

core processes, and be the best in the world at them.

Evaluate outsourcing everything else (context). Free up time, attention and resources for core.

From Geoffrey Moore’s Dealing with Darwin

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How to Build• Software• Network & Locations• People & Operations• Advanced features

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Software• DNS

• Names to numbers. • Scope is authoritative (not recursive).• twitter.com -> 199.16.156.198

• Options• Open source: BIND, djbdns, Power DNS• Commercial: Microsoft, Secure64• Appliance-based: Infoblox

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Software… rarely the problem for DNS$ dig company.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> company.com

;; global options: +cmd

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 1876

;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;company.com. IN A

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October 2012

Hurricane

Sandy

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“A frying squirrel took out half of our Santa Clara data center two years back,”- Mike Christian, Yahoo

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“Squirrel chews account for a whopping 17% of our damages so far this year! But let me add that it is down from 28% just last year and it continues to decrease since we added cable guards to our plant.”, Fred Lawler, Level(3)

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Network & Locations• com. -> dyn.com.

• NS record TTL: 86,400s -> 24 hours• To swap DNS servers, expect at least this much downtime

• Must deploy DNS to multiple locations• Recursive DNS servers will try others

• Must mitigate single points of failure(upstream connectivity, wide area events)

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• DNS cache poisoning, DNSSEC and general DNS security

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Network & Locations• Unicast: Each global location uniquely addressed• Anycast: Locations announce same address space,

queries routed to closest location.• Anycast is now table-stakes for DNS

• Scalability• Resilience against DDoS attacks• Performance

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People & Operations• Anycast

• Deep routing expertise• Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)• Strong ISP relationships (NANOG)

• Tooling• Routing intelligence: Renesys• Network health: Catchpoint

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Advanced Features• Who should care?

• More than one datacenter• More than one cloud region/vendor• Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

• Why?• Answer queries dynamically based on:

• Health of your infrastructure/application• Location of user

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DIY Advanced Features• BIND GeoDNS: http://cvw.gs/bind-geodns

• Per query lookup to MaxMind GeoIP DB• Geopolitical traffic management

• Appliance-based GSLB• End user IP location != Recursive DNS IP location

• IP geolocation databases are for end-user IPs• Need a mapping of what user geographies

each recursive IP represents for accuracy

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Build vs Buy Recap• Part of your core competitive advantage?

• If so, build it. Else, evaluate buying.• Software will not be your challenge• Challenges will be in:

• Deploying & operating global locations/networks• Hiring the right people with deep expertise• Taking advantage of advanced DNS features