DNS load balancing is one very beneficial technique. If you are working with a website with a faulty and slow network will impact the experience of the end-users. To avoid a poor perception of the site and the whole organization, you could implement a load balancing method. Let’s explain more about how this technique does not allow a web server to overload.
What does DNS load balancing mean?
DNS load balancing is a popular technique applied for administrating the traffic of a hostname. It is an efficient and organized way to distribute the inbound network or application traffic over various servers.
How does Load balancing actually work?
In case you have a popular website, the traffic to it is going to be a lot. Therefore, it is going to work with many requests from clients or users. Furthermore, for each request that is received has to be returned an answer with the correct and precise piece of information such as images, text, video, or application data. All of this must be accomplished in a fast and safe method.
DNS load balancers are going first to apply a number of criteria and analyze the incoming traffic. Then, as a second step, they select and determine to allow the traffic to proceed or, in another case, to stop it. They can redirect it to a separate server depending on the current load of a packet or different parameters.
DNS Load Balancers types
Depending on the arrangement of a DNS load balancer, it can manage the traffic in different ways.
- The arrival of the query – This is an easy and basic approach to the balancing method. Based on the time of the arrival of the queries, they will proceed to another server. For example, the first request will continue to server one. The second request will go to server two and so on until the process starts all over.
- The query’s location – In this case, your DNS will examine from what location the traffic is arriving. Then it will redirect it to a specific IP address that is going to achieve a lot faster and better performance in general. A very common example of such a load balancing type is a service called GeoDNS.
- Weighted balancing – One server is going to receive more traffic, and another is going to receive less. It is all based on different values, from which to choose. For example, such a value could be the server’s computing power.
- Busy server – It is also possible to handle the traffic depending on the occupation of the servers. The queries are capable of going to the second nearest DNS server in case the main one is overloaded. That way, the network will continue to be effective, and it will function normally.
These are the basic approaches to the DNS load balancing method. But, of course, there are more ways to achieve it through different combinations.
Key Benefits
- Redundancy – The traffic is led to two or more web servers, which is very beneficial. If one of them is down, then the traffic is automatically distributed to the other servers that are still operating.
- Reduced downtime is another key advantage, which also leads to keeping the uptime and increases performance.
- Efficiency – Failures are detected early, and DNS load balancing handles them effectively. It also assures that whatever failure will not harm the workload and the servers.
- Flexibility – The IT team is able to do many maintenance tasks on the server. Such actions won’t impact the website’s uptime. While one of the servers is under maintenance, the other one is prepared to handle the workload. As a result, the experience of the users is not interrupted.