Month: December 2021

DDoS protection DNS

How can you reduce the risks with DDoS protected DNS?

by Gia

DDoS protected DNS is an additional beneficial service. Let’s explain a little bit more about it.

DDoS attack – What is it?

The DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a cyber-attack that aims to disable your service, network, website. That usually happens by sending a serious amount of traffic until your server goes down, or they exploit the DNS or protocol such as the UDP flaw and triple your website or application.

There are a lot of different DDoS attacks, and oftentimes they bring down even big companies, for instance, Amazon. Therefore, if you don’t have proper protection, you are risking a lot. In addition, in case you are utilizing shared hosting, such an attack on any of your “neighbors” is going to reflect on you too.

What is DDoS protected DNS?

DDoS protected DNS is an additional service that includes several different tools and mechanisms to inspect traffic and prevent DDoS attacks. Cybercriminals organize and initiate DDoS attacks with large amounts of traffic. Their main goal is to make your servers incapable of responding to the queries of your regular users.

What does DDoS protected DNS include?

  • Monitor. Monitor the entire incoming DNS traffic. In case it detects an abnormal pattern, it could take different actions to prevent a potential DDoS attack towards your website. For that reason, acknowledging the traffic is crucial. 
  • Deep analysis of the traffic. The best understanding of the standard patterns of the traffic and use them for comparison. 
  • Filter. Implementing a filter of the incoming traffic depending on whitelisting or blacklisting and different criteria. The prevention can determine and eliminate malicious traffic. 
  • Traffic separation. Comprehend what regular user traffic is and what fake traffic is. 
  • Spread the traffic. In some situations, only a load balancing technique could be enough to distribute the fake traffic. That way, the DNS servers are going to share the load and withstand the attack. 
  • Activate Failovers. If one of your servers goes down, it is going to inform you about the event. In addition, it is going to redirect the traffic to the remaining DNS servers. You won’t need a human operator to accomplish that, and it is going to be performed automatically. 

​Why should you get DDoS protected DNS?

  • Downtime. If you decide to implement DDoS protection, your servers are going to handle a lot more traffic even under a DDoS attack. So, as a result, the downtime is going to be significantly less. Your customers won’t be bothered to reach your application or website. 
  • Easy to manage. Basic DNS knowledge is all you need, and it will be very simple. You just have to set it up, and from there, the monitors and failover tool are able to operate by themselves. Just in cases when the attack is very strong, your IT team and the customer service of the DNS provider together are going to have to fight the DDoS attack. 
  • Great performance. The DNS service provider could give you a better distribution of traffic. Your website or application is going to remain available for your visitors even under attack. That way, the productivity, and performance are excellent.
  • It is more profitable. Downtime could cost a lot. Imagine your services or a website not being available for your customers. You are going to lose a lot of potential purchases and earnings. So, you see that DDoS-protected DNS service is really worth it. 
DNS

Benefits of using a Secondary DNS zone

by Gia

What is a Secondary DNS zone?

The Secondary DNS zone represents a read-only copy of the DNS data (DNS records)of the Primary (Master) DNS zone. You could find it also called Backup or Slave DNS zone. It is very important to note that for the various DNS records, for instance, A, AAAA, MX, TXT records, and many more, it is not possible to add them directly into the Secondary DNS zone. 

Why is a Secondary DNS server important?

The only method for the Secondary DNS zone to obtain the DNS data is by getting them from the Primary (Master) DNS zone of the DNS server. For that purpose, it is necessary a process called DNS zone transfer to be completed. 

The Backup DNS zone can serve in several ways, yet one of the main ideas for creating it is for backup. That way, if, for some reason, your Primary DNS zone is not operating, that won’t bother you. Your Backup DNS zone is going to assist in such situations and answer the requests thanks to its copy.

Benefits

Redundancy: In case your Primary DNS zone is incapable of answering, the Slave DNS zone will provide redundancy. If there is no Secondary DNS zone, if the primary DNS zone fails, your website is going to become unavailable, and users won’t be able to access your content.

Build a reliable DNS management: DNS servers that store the DNS zones could become victims of security threats. The one that is most commonly used is Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS attack). By setting up a DNS provider with DDoS protection and placing your Slave DNS zone there, you could protect yourself from malicious DDoS attacks.

Distributing the load: When you add a Slave DNS zone, you could provide a faster response to DNS queries. 

DNS zone transfer – Types

The process called DNS zone transfer is an easy and simple task to complete. It makes a duplicate of the DNS data (DNS records) created in the Primary DNS zone to the Secondary DNS zone.

There are two types of DNS zone transfer that you could make:

  • Full zone transfer (AXFR zone transfer). With this type, you could make a copy of all the DNS records from the Primary DNS zone to the Secondary DNS zone. It is great to use it when you haven’t updated the Secondary for a long period of time, and you want to be sure that everything is up to date. Another case when it is commonly used is for a new Backup DNS zone, and you have to import the entire information.
  • Incremental zone transfer (IXFR zone transfer). This type is very useful when you want to update only the latest changes in your DNS information from your Primary DNS zone to the Slave DNS zone. That way, only the modifications will update, and it is going to use fewer network resources. It is easy and practical!
DNS Network

The Ultimate Guide to DNS Propagation

by Gia

What does DNS propagation mean?

DNS propagation is a process that includes updating and spreading the new changes and adjustments you create in your Domain Name System (DNS). They have to be distributed across the entire network. 

Why the DNS propagation takes so long?

Managing your online business or administrating a network involves constant changes on the DNS. Some of the possible scenarios are when you have to add a new DNS record, delete or change some other DNS records, also replace IP addresses. Maybe you desire to make some adjustments on the TTL (time-to-live) values, redirect your visitors to a specific subdomain, or add an SSL certificate. These are only for illustration of how many different modifications of your DNS could appear. 

Actually, no matter what changes you desire to make, all of them are going to be stored on your authoritative DNS server. However, the network has many more DNS servers, like recursive DNS servers, positioned in different locations globally. Each one of these servers has to receive the updated data because if that doesn’t happen, they are going to have some difficulties operating properly. All of those DNS servers have a fundamental part of the DNS resolution process.

How does the DNS propagation work?

For several situations, DNS changes are required. Typical cases are when you desire to make some renovation to your website or when you migrate to a new DNS hosting provider. Different circumstances that can need it are redirecting from the primary domain to subdomains or implementing services, such as FTP and email. All of these circumstances incorporate activities, such as creating, editing, or removing DNS records. 

The administrator is going to make these corrections directly on the authoritative DNS server. Once the modifications are ready and saved inside it, it is time for the DNS propagation process to happen. That requires every DNS server on the network to obtain a copy with the latest DNS records. 

The DNS propagation process is rolling, although that doesn’t mean that it occurs simultaneously for all servers. 

How to check it?

Here you have three options to make a check on the DNS propagation. Decide depending on your operating system (OS).

For Linux and macOS users, here you have the Dig command.

First, open your Terminal, and next write: 

dig domainname.com 

It will trigger a lookup for an A or AAAA record. As a result, you are going to view the IP addresses of your website. If they have changed, DNS propagation is completed. If they haven’t, it will require a little more time.

*Replace with your domain name and TLD instead of the ones in the example.

For Windows 10 users, here you have the Nslookup command.

Open the Command Prompt, and then type: 

nslookup domainname.com

Once again, the lookup result is going to show out if your website’s IP addresses have changed or not.

*Replace with your domain name and TLD instead of the ones in the example.

Online checkers of DNS propagation.

You could use online tools for making DNS lookups to review data associated with your domain name. In addition, you can examine if the DNS modifications you created have been updated.