DNS SRV Resource Records – the close cousin of MX Records

MX Records are one of those critical DNS records that are required for any domain that’s using email. They are a different type of record than all the others in that they have built in redundancy into the record set itself. This built in redundancy comes in from having two or more MX records required (primary and backup server at the least) and priorities set on these records

MX records for email servers would look like:

Host                                          Priority
primarymail.example.com             10
backupmail.example.com              20

MX records are designed this way to ensure mail will be reliable and that there is always a backup server. If an email is sent and the first server isn’t responding, the second server at priority 20 get’s called into duty and the email is delivered. SRV records are another type of DNS resource record that also offers built in redundancy in the form of multiple records with both weight and priority and port. Here’s the excerpt from the RFC written by Paul Vixie back in Feb 2000:

“The SRV RR allows administrators to use several servers for a single domain, to move services from host to host with little fuss, and to designate some hosts as primary servers for a service and others as backups. Clients ask for a specific service/protocol for a specific domain (the word domain is used here in the strict RFC 1034 sense), and get back the names of any available servers.”

SRV records have been around for a while, but since the recent surge of VOIP, UC & UCaaS providers (Unified Communications) and many collaboration clients utilize SRV records for their services. When an organization set’s up a Unified Communications platform such as the Cisco Spark, they setup Cisco Expressways, Cisco Call Managers that offer these services. Clients then request these DNS SRV Resource records when attempting to connect.

For example, when using Cisco UC and firing up the Jabber collaboration client, the client first requests the _collab_edge DNS SRV record set to see available servers.

DNS SRV records for Cisco UC Collaboration (Jabber) records would look like this:

DNS SRV Name   Priority  Weight  Port  Target or (Host)
_collab-edge._tls      1 3 8443 na-jabber.example.com.
_collab-edge._tls      2 2 8443 eu-jabber.example.com.
_collab-edge._tls      3 1 8443 ap-jabber.example.com.

When a user in the North American office of Example corp and fires up their Jabber client the DNS will respond with the above records. This tells the Jabber client to connect to the lowest priority server, in this case we can see that na-jabber.example.com is the lowest priority. If that server isn’t available, the client will step up to the next priority server, in this case the eu-jabber.example.com server.

Just like MX records, you can see that SRV has built in redundancy into the resource record and it goes a few steps further by allowing weight and priority and the service port. Pretty cool huh? Just one of the neat ways you can use DNS SRV….but wait it gets better.

DNS SRV records are great but as companies grow and scale they add more servers and more SRV records. When an employee goes on the road and depending on where they are, the setup of the SRV and VPN or No VPN there are issues with the way the SRV records are handed back. Take the example above, as an employee in the North American Chicago office, It’s no problem since they are always connecting to the na-jabber server. As soon as the employee travels to Japan for a visit, their Jabber client is going to connect all the way back to North America. This can be a problem and not only take longer to connect, but it can also introduce high latency (slowdowns) that can wreak havoc on video quality, connection times and not to mention patience.

Here’s where some DNS SRV and Geographic DNS comes into play. Since we have three global locations to connect to, we can enable GEO DNS on our DNS SRV records and get even more usability out of these handy resource records.

Adding GEO DNS into these _collab-edge records now provide us the advantage to hand back the closest server to them in the region they are in. For example, now when the Chicago employee lands in Japan and connects to Jabber, the local DNS will direct him though the magic of DNS to our CloudfloorDNS Anycast DNS servers which will geo-locate John and determine that he’s using an IP address located in Japan. Our GEO Anycast DNS servers then respond back with the custom order of DNS SRV records for that region which would look like below:

DNS SRV Name   Priority  Weight  Port  Target or (Host)
_collab-edge._tls      1 3 8443 ap-jabber.example.com.
_collab-edge._tls      2 2 8443 eu-jabber.example.com.
_collab-edge._tls      3 1 8443 na-jabber.example.com.

You can see here that Geographic DNS located the user and determined they were in the APAC region and then hands back the DNS SRV records that sets the ap-jabber.example.com server with the lowest priority making it the first choice. We still provide the other SRV records as backup in the order that makes the most sense for lower latency and higher performance. Best of all it works for all DNS SRV record types such as _xmpp-server, _xmpp-client, sip, _sips, _sipfederation, and others. We hope this howto helps you utilize your DNS SRV records to better streamline your services and provide a higher quality of service.

CloudfloorDNS awarded US patent on Performance/Distance based Load Balancing

We’re pleased to show off our shiny new US Patent on performance & location based DNS Load Balancing. This is a big deal to us – it’s something that has been in the US Patent system for almost 6 years. This patent is a combination of hard work by a handful of talented people here at CloudfloorDNS and our parent company Everbridge. Why is this patent important? The patent, US# US20130297596 A1 details “systems and methods for performance based load balancing” and covers our unique combination of both performance testing (monitoring servers for latency, uptime) and our GEO DNS and DNS Failover services. This combination of global monitoring and our Anycast DNS network coupled with advanced DNS-based services offer the the best possible performance and reliability for any online business.

How our customers utilize these services:

GEO DNS – Geographically Balancing & Prioritizing Unified Communications

A growing number of clients are utilizing our GEO DNS to hand back DNS SRV records to the fastest/closest server to their end-users and/or employees. SRV records are a type of DNS resource record method to supply a list of records to the unified communications clients (VOIP, CHAT, VOICECHAT, etc) and offer port, hostname, weight and priority with redundancy built in – much like MX (Mail) Records. When an organization has a global presence, they need these servers distributed across the globe to help reduce latency and provide the best possible video/chat/VOIP call quality. Our GEO DNS hands back the DNS SRV Records for the closest regional server allowing for the ultimate in reliability and quality of service for your Unified Communications platforms such as Cisco Unified Communications (CUCM, Cisco Express) and others.

VOIP Monitoring & Failover – Providing the best possible call quality to your users

VOIP services are growing by leaps and bounds and excellent call quality and service reliability is paramount for any VOIP and UCaaS provider. They need to deliver a high availability solution with the lowest possible latency knowing that outages and poor call quality can destroy a business overnight! Our SIP Options (VOIP) monitoring and DNS Failover offer a simple and easy way to provide load balancing, monitoring and uptime to your critical VOIP infrastructure. Our global monitoring check’s your servers using the SIP Options protocol, detects latency or failure and fails over to backups instantly.

These are just a few of the many ways our expertise in performance and distance-based (GEO) DNS and related services are helping organizations provide more reliable & consistent services to their clients. If you think we may be able to help your online business, please contact a Cloudfloor DNS expert

Hurricane Phillipe came into New England with a roar this past sunday, exactly 5 years after superstorm Sandy graced us with her presence in 2013. Just two days later more than 1 million homes are still without power! Many schools and businesses are still closed while the cleanup and power restoration continues and it could be several more days until the regional grid is fully restored.

In some ways the power to your home is just like DNS is to your business. Without it, nothing works. No Lights (Website), No Water (Email), and so on. Things just don’t work and your home doesn’t feel much like home when nothing works.

The relationship to DNS and your online business is similar. DNS is just like the electricity that powers your website, your email, your VPN, VOIP, API’s and other important aspects that make your online business run. Unplanned downtime is extremely expensive since your business can no longer sell online, customers can’t checkout and pay or even see your website for that matter. Their emails to you don’t work and bounce back….in essence it’s a blackout of everything online costing you thousands of dollars in lost sales and opportunity.

Portable and Standby generators are humming along in my neighborhood and many others across the region. These trusty devices are the backup power that many rely on when the power grid fails to deliver. In the online business world, the generator is very much like Secondary DNS. When the power goes out the generator takes over and makes living in the home possible. Secondary DNS does very much the same thing but for your online business. In the event of a DNS outage at your primary provider, Secondary DNS “takes over” and keeps your business running. Best of all, you don’t have to drag the secondary DNS out of the garage and fire it up, it’s 100% automatic and your business will never miss a beat if your primary DNS goes down

Interested in adding more reliability and resiliency to your online presence? We have DNS experts to help you every step of the way and we know how scary it is to mess around with your DNS. Contact us or visit our Secondary DNS product page for more details on how we can help

Don’t let a DDoS attack Eclipse your DNS

DDoS attacks are on the rise and the experts don’t forsee any slowdown in the near future. Attackers utilize botnets, IoT devices and other compromised systems to build cyber-armies and leverage these armies against you directly or your DNS service provider. In many cases, DD0S attacks can be fatal to small online businesses that aren’t protected.

The first step to protecting your online digital business is at the infrastructure level and that means DNS. Here are a few steps you can use to protect your digital business when it comes to DNS:

1 – Don’t get caught using your “hosting or registrar” DNS 
DNS typically comes free with any domain you register or web hosting or domain registrar but there is a drawback to this. In most cases their DNS is much slower and less resilient when it comes to DD0S attacks. Since DNS is such a critical component to your online success, you should invest in DNS as a business strategy. This means going with Managed DNS and setting up a budget for fast, reliable DNS. Pick a managed DNS provider that uses an Anycast DNS network like CloudfloorDNS, NS1, UltraDNS, Dyn or others. These guys focus solely on DNS as a Service and run large Anycast DNS networks in the cloud. They also have DDoS mitigation in place to help thwart attacks and are typically much more fortified than your Web hosting or domain registrar DNS

2 – Backup your DNS with Secondary DNS
Secondary DNS is a standard method to safely backup your DNS zones onto another DNS provider/network if your primary DNS provider goes down. Secondary DNS has been around for quite some time although it’s not often implemented – even though it can save your business if you have a primary DNS outage (like the attack on Dyn back in Oct 2016). Setting up secondary DNS only takes about 10 minutes if not less and instantly copies your DNS zones to a secondary provider. The “spreads the risk” across two DNS providers and in many cases can also speed up your DNS. Best of all, Secondary DNS is low cost and will have a minor impact on your budget yet provides the best possible insurance you can ask for in DNS Infrastructure

3 – Utilize Advanced DNS services
GEO DNS, DNS Failover and DNS Load Balancing are some of the best ways to manage your DNS Traffic and add uptime to your online services. DNS Failover and DNS Load balancing are standard offerings by all managed DNS providers and are also low cost ways to extend your reliability and scalability. Monitoring your servers from multiple locations and failing over DNS to a backup when your primary fails can help extend the reliability of your customer facing servers and apps. Monitoring them for latency can also be implemented, so any servers that slow down above a certain threshold (in ms) can be taken out of the load balancing pool.

GEO DNS can also be used to increase performance and customer retention. By geo-locating your clients in their DNS requests you can determine the closest/fastest server and then send them to the version of your website or application in their local language and currency. It’s a well know fact that faster websites/apps and localized content helps convert more customers and makes your website or app more “sticky”

These are just a few of the many suggestions to help you keep the lights on when it comes to your digital business and DNS. In the age of DDoS Attacks, ransomware attacks and other digital criminal mischief it’s important that you realize the critical nature of your DNS infrastructure and make proper investments to ensure the reliability of your online operations

UPS, FedEx and the postal service are all experts at delivering packages and they need to be as efficient as possible to ensure they maintain profitability. If they are slow and inefficient at delivering the goods, they will loose sales and have dis-satisfied customers as a result.

The same goes with your online content – you need to deliver it fast and reliable or you’ll also loose customers and sales. Content accuracy also counts – If you have multiple resellers in different geographic regions you’ll also need to deliver that content accurately using the local language and currency. It’s a well known fact that localized content can give a big boost to online sales and conversions. Think about it, when was the last time you purchased from a website that wasn’t in your local language or currency?

GEO DNS is an advanced component of the Cloudfloor Enterprise Anycast DNS platform. GEO DNS resolves Authoritative DNS requests by translating names into IP addresses, but goes one level deeper with a geo-location of the end user requesting the content. Once the end-user’s location is revealed, the DNS will hand back IP’s based on certain geographic rules that you set for your domain(s). You can send the user to a server closer to them or to a version of your website that has their local reseller and pricing, all in their native language. You can even use geo location and forward users to a http/s URL for services like Shopify and others with limited DNS naming capabilities. Overall GEO DNS is a simple and effective way to fine tune your online content delivery and increases your end-user satisfaction while doing so.

Interested in our GEO DNS for your online business or possibly taking our Enterprise DNS platform for a test drive? Contact us or visit our GEO DNS product pages for more details

Secondary DNS Hosting – DNS Backup Service

DNS is such a critical component to your digital business and it’s surprising how many folks don’t realize it. DNS is often taken for granted and becomes an afterthought until it goes belly up and stops working. When DNS stops, EVERYTHING stops!

Secondary DNS to the rescue! Secondary DNS is a standard method to safely backup your DNS zones onto another DNS provider/network if your primary DNS provider goes down. Secondary DNS has been around for quite some time although it’s not often implemented – even though it can save your digital bacon if you have a primary DNS outage (like the attack on Dyn back in Oct 2016)

Since the Dyn DDoS attack, we’ve seen a huge influx of questions and activity around our Secondary DNS service. In order to take the mystery out of Secondary DNS, we created several techncial how-to’s on implement a Secondary DNS solution using CloudfloorDNS as your DNS backup. If you currently have a single DNS provider and are using Dyn, NS1, DNS Made Easy or GoDaddy Premium DNS we have a Secondary DNS how-to that shows you step by step on how to enable Secondary DNS hosting at CloudfloorDNS. It literally takes less than 10 minutes to setup and can save you thousands of dollars in the event of a primary DNS outage.

Interested in learning how to setup Secondary DNS for your online operation? See our Secondary DNS tutorials on our Secondary DNS hosting page or scroll below to download them directly

Hosting DNS at DYN? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

Hosting DNS at DNSMadeEasy? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

Hosting DNS at NS1? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]

Hosting DNS at GoDaddy? – Backup your DNS at CloudfloorDNS [PDF]