Information technologies and systems in general tend to be only as good as the operators and experts make them to be and then maintain them. If there is even a single thing lacking or being overlooked, the whole suffers and the business as well. Distributed systems are no exception as they are only strong and resilient as the team makes them to be.
The focus of this article is going to be DNS traffic, that is, domain name system traffic. DNS management is arguably the best approach to build a distributed system and here you will be able to learn everything there is about it. Moreover, there is going to be some word about the best ways to improve your traffic management. If you are interested in learning more about this subject, we advise you to check out https://constellix.com/products/geodns.
What is DNS?
In a way, we can think of DNS as an extensive library of domains, organized from the least meaningful to the most meaningful part of their entire name. Domain names are the bread and butter of a website’s initial success, and they are important for numerous reasons. A good domain name should be short and concise but still tell you all you need to know about what lies behind the address. The least important part is the .com part for example, because most addresses contain this extension.
It is the rest of the words and letters used in the name that make all the difference. The most meaningful part would be the most unique one, the general idea of the whole page. For example, that would be the sports, shop, store, or service part, something that describes exactly what you can expect. Each domain has its own IP address too and a TTL, short for Time to Live. This TTL tells how much time the hostname is valid for that IP address, that is, how long the cache the info for that long, otherwise we must look for the domain again.
DNS providers are called editors. There are numerous sections for every domain name server, zones inside of them, and then finally DNS records. The whole library we mentioned earlier is a root server, comprised of 13 name servers (A to M) that have keys to hostnames roots. These root servers help locate Top Level Domains (TLD), those highest in the competitive world of DNS.
Improving DNS Traffic Management
Connecting with employees and customers requires you to have the right means, or infrastructure. These are applications that enable higher performance and easier interactions. Accessing data from multiple devices safely and within optimal timeframes is the goal if a website is to operate without any issues. How else is your product or service going to reach a wider customer base? Following are three ways to improve this.
1. Balancing Objectives
Performance objectives and cost objectives have to be in a state of balance if you are to be successful. If you are to use user traffic the best way and steer it in the right direction, there are a few things worth considering. First of all, geographical location of the user is important. Then you have to think about the cost of directing them to an endpoint. All of this can be done through a reliable platform that integrates the remaining parts of your network. Real-time data gathering will tell you all you have to know regarding capacities of servers, reliability of sites, different aspects of performance, and traffic based on the limits and objectives you are working on. Such an algorithm-based approach helps with balancing cost savings and user performance. What is more, analyzing and reviewing the distribution of traffic also becomes possible, so that you can change and adjust the rules when you need them.
2. Real-Time Internet Conditions
If you use this to your advantage to ensure 100% uptime and peak performance for the users, there is no reason to believe your traffic will be bad. Invest in automated traffic management since it is the most intelligent way of doing things, and the experience of every single user will remain on optimal levels. Remember that internet users are always demanding more, and an average person wants much more and faster than before. Accessing apps and websites from anywhere in the world with roughly the same success and at similar speeds is the ultimate goal to strive for, meaning downtimes, lagging, and outages have no place in business. Intelligent traffic steering helps greatly here and ensures optimal experience for all.
Frustratingly slow pages or those refusing to transition between menus will sway away most potential customers and ruin your chances at a revenue increase. With information on server capacity, server status, and other parameters, you will be able to bypass down servers and focus on the good ones.
3. Infrastructure as Code
If you manage to empower your IT professionals to implement and switch to the cutting edge trends like infrastructure as code, you will see a rise in potential as well as more concrete increases overall. Your DevOps team can quickly get out of hand as your network grows, meaning their workload could use some tweaks here and there. Code is therefore being used more and more to configure, provision, and manage the infrastructure as a whole. Traditional onsite work is no longer the desired method because it takes longer. The DevOps operators usually use multiple systems to complete their work each day, so a platform that is flexible enough and one that integrates them all will surely empower them and allow them to perform their duties more easily and successfully. What is more, such an approach will prevent similarly troublesome issues in the future when or if you experience scaling again.
Bonus Advice: Get your remote teams a high-performance VPN
This will further allow you to scale up your network of remote work in these trying times. Accessing company data from anywhere securely and freely is important and allowing your team a strong VPN is key to this. Frustrations that can arise due to the inability to open certain pages will disappear forever.
Kim Marks 
Nicola Holder