{"id":1427,"date":"2023-06-12T14:34:13","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T14:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dnsfilter.com\/blog\/anywhere-anytime-anycast"},"modified":"2023-06-12T14:34:13","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T14:34:13","slug":"anywhere-anytime-anycast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/12\/anywhere-anytime-anycast\/","title":{"rendered":"Anywhere, Anytime, Anycast"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

One of the most critical technologies that DNSFilter depends upon to provide exceptionally fast, exceptionally reliable service is a network configuration referred to as Anycast.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anycast is a kind of network architecture that is uncommon at the levels that many of our customers may be familiar with. While it\u2019s not particularly a secret ingredient in our secret sauce\u2014many of our industry contemporaries depend on it as well\u2014it is an elegant solution to a number of issues in large-scale networks.<\/span><\/p>\n

You may already be familiar with some of the networking devices, configurations, and protocols used in common networks. Hubs, switches, routers, gateways. TCP, UDP, DNS, IP addresses, ARP, netbios, SMB, CORBA. Mix in a bit of host files, routing tables, and cache, and you\u2019ll have just about all the ingredients you need for basic networking on a private Local Area Network. But the Internet is not a basic private LAN, it\u2019s an open*, decentralized**, interconnected network of networks.<\/p>\n

The network or networks is where things change for the capital \u201cI\u201d Internet. Most of us are probably familiar with the configuration of our local Wi-Fi network or a wired LAN. But for normal everyday things, we need to direct all of that traffic to an ISP where we are magically connected to the broader internet. <\/span><\/p>\n

In an effort to maintain some level of control and keep things as fast as possible, ISPs and large businesses register to host a specific block of assigned IP addresses and connect them to an assigned \u201cAutonomous System\u201d (AS), and each AS advertises itself by a specific Autonomous System Number (ASN). Each of these AS\u2019s operate using what is referred to as Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP. <\/span><\/p>\n

BGP is a routing system that is (generally) pointed to multiple different other AS\u2019s and can determine the fastest route by which to get from point A to point B through the global maze, typically by measuring latency between servers. Without BGP, the routing for the Internet would essentially be random until the packet arrived at its final destination, and time-to-delivery would be wildly variable and much more susceptible to route outages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the time when computers talk to each other, they do so using what is called Unicast\u2014that is one computer sending communications along a single path to another single computer. But a global network would become ineffective quickly under such a configuration. <\/span><\/p>\n

Downed lines, server outages, and simple distance-related latency would have doomed the Internet to failure before it ever got started. And as we all know, there are those on the Internet who like to cause chaos, and sometimes servers get overloaded even without any malicious intent. <\/span><\/p>\n

Other messaging modes were established, namely Multicast, Anycast, and Broadcast\u2014each of which addresses a different aspect of the messaging delivery issue in a different way. As can be inferred, a Broadcast communication model sends the message in question to every device within range indiscriminately\u2014to all addresses and to all channels (although still limited by network protocol and port assignment). This can be used for alerts and things like advertising when a new device has joined a network. <\/span><\/p>\n

A Multicast message is one sent from one machine to several others at once, with communication and delivery expected with all of them. This kind of messaging can be useful in geographic distribution or synchronization between an authoritative server and multiple redundant systems. <\/span><\/p>\n

Slightly less obvious than the others is the Anycast message distribution. In this configuration, a server is connected to several other servers. Like with Multicast, it can communicate with all of them as needed. But when using Anycast, only a single server-to-server connection is established, using the single connection that is determined to be most favorable. The full routing capability of each of the subordinate servers is equally available, and which server may be the best connection can change and does regularly. <\/span><\/p>\n

This configuration could defeat DDoS attacks, perform some degree of load balancing, or achieve the fastest performance (although the protocol can\u2019t actually see any application-level data such as load, it makes inferred decisions based on indirect observations).<\/span><\/p>\n

An Anycast configuration is critical to the effectiveness of DNSFilter\u2019s query resolution speed. We have Anycast servers strategically located around the globe, handling both the routing of the users\u2019 queries to us and resolving the DNS queries in the fastest manner possible. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully, you\u2019ve enjoyed this brief peek into the deeper corners of the Internet and maybe learned something as well.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019d like to experience the magic of Anycast with DNSFilter, start a <\/span>free trial here<\/a>.<\/span>\u200d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u200d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most critical technologies that DNSFilter depends upon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[432,222],"tags":[433,230],"class_list":["post-1427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anycast","category-featured","tag-anycast","tag-featured"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","chromenews-featured":"","chromenews-large":"","chromenews-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"DNSFilter","author_link":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/author\/dnsfilter\/"},"category_info":"Anycast<\/a> Featured<\/a>","tag_info":"Featured","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}