Configure DNS to provide translation for best response times

[Barry Margolin]

In article <fnfiff$jpd$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
 "Oscar Usifer" <oscaruser at programmer.net> wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> How can I configure my DNS servers to provide the quickest response time & 
> lowest latency for the name to IP translation if we have several different 
> datacenters (~6-20)? My org wants all requested data for any individual node 
> on the USENET to receive data from the best of all possible server offerings. 

I suspect you meant Internet, not USENET.

> This is mainly for HTTP traffic, but could also be useful for ftp 
> downloading, or other services. Our version of bind is bind-9.3.4. 

Are you asking for the best response times during the DNS lookups, or 
are you asking for DNS to send end users to the closest web servers, so 
that they get the best HTTP response times?

One way to do this is to put DNS servers in each datacenter, and have 
each of them configured to resolve names to the addresses in that 
datacenter.  This relies on the fact that caching nameservers will keep 
track of DNS response times, and prefer the ones with the best times.

A better, but much more expensive, solution might be to use a 
third-party service like Akamai's Global Traffic Management.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***