DNS downtime: Meaning
A DNS outage, also known as DNS downtime, is when the DNS is not functioning correctly. This implies that the IP address won’t be visible if you look for the domain name. Users will instead utilize DNS requests to find your domain. The domain’s authoritative nameserver will be requested by the DNS recursive server, but it will not respond and instead receive an error message.
How can a DNS outage affect your company?
Typical DNS Downtimes
There are many factors, but we’ll concentrate on the outcomes with a higher statistical likelihood. This is a crucial task because it will enable strategies to be made to reduce or eliminate the most frequent causes of an occurrence that can be discussed and planned for beforehand.
A website can be susceptible to a number of frequent outages, including the following, even with the correct DNS record configured on a network of highly accessible servers:
- DNS amplification attacks
- DDoS attacks
- DNS spoofing/poisoning assaults
- High TTL (Time to Live)
- Network and hardware issues
How can you protect against DNS Downtime?
There are different ways to protect your Domain Name System against DNS outages. Here are some of the most effective ones:
- It’s crucial that website visitors can quickly and easily get the content they’re looking for. The first step in assuring stable performance and connectivity is DNS Monitoring. With it, you can easily recognize the unstandard traffic or monitor the changes in the Domain Name System. For example, if DNS downtime happens.
- Get a backup DNS service (Secondary DNS). There is already a DNS service provider for you (Primary DNS). A different provider might be employed, and you could configure them to act as Secondary nameservers using their numerous Secondary DNS servers. On these servers, a duplicate of the zone file and DNS entries will be kept. They will therefore be able to respond to DNS requests in the same manner as Primary DNS. If the last one fails, you’ll have a backup.
- Service for preventing DDoS attacks (DDoS protection service). Among other things, the attack is absorbed using advanced and constant monitoring, firewalls, software, hardware, and DDoS deflation.
- Use DNS load balancing. This works well for allocating bandwidth between servers. It takes into account variables like the number of open connections, the duration of links, etc., when functioning. DNS load balancing makes use of two or more servers and controls traffic so that each server receives roughly the same amount of work and doesn’t become sluggish or overworked. It’s an excellent approach to handle traffic spikes, which may be caused by malware activity or be natural. While decreasing security concerns and downtime, it improves online performance. The requests from your clients will be handled by another server if one of yours fails or is compromised.
Conclusion
DNS outage is that type of danger that every company thinks is a rare possibility for happen to it. But on the contrary, it is quite possible. So take precautions to safeguard yourself, but don’t let it ride shotgun on your system.