Make your domain resolution faster for every user, no matter where in the world they are, with a simple to use DNS service! Yes, it is possible. You can achieve impressive results and shorter the waiting time for all of your visitors, based on their location with GeoDNS.

What is GeoDNS?

GeoDNS is a paid service or feature that some of the bigger DNS providers have in their portfolio. It uses the users’ IP addresses to determine where they are and point them to the closest server. It is a geographical routing method that can help you reduce the stress on a single server and route the traffic to multiple, so it is a load balancer too.

You should definitely get a GeoDNS for your business site if you have an international presence and you want to provide a DNS network with better performance for your visitors. If you don’t care about making your visitors’ experience better, skip it.

So, we got your attention, now let’s see how exactly does DNS perform their magic.

How does it work?

GeoDNS’s trick is geolocation. When your visitors request your site, those requests will go through DNS servers. With GeoDNS, you can use many DNS servers all around the world (depending on your DNS service provider) that can understand the traffic. They will look up their IP address database and compare each user and what data they have on the particular IP address. After that, they will redirect the traffic to the per-determine IP address, which is usually the closest to the request’s origin.

To make it simple, let’s see an example:

Juan that lives in Puebla, Mexico, John from L.A., The USA, and Gerda from Hanover, Germany, want to visit a site called example.com. The site has a GeoDNS and has set multiple points of presence in Mexico City (MX), Texas (US), Berlin (EU), Buenos Aires (AR), and Istanbul (TR).

They all want to resolve the same domain name (example.com), but their DNS queries will be detected from the name servers, and they will be redirected to different IP addresses, depending on their IP address. Juan will be directed to Mexico City, John to Texas, and Gerda to Berlin.

Benefits of GeoDNS

• Redirect your traffic. Use GeoDNS to create a full CDN. You can have your site in multiple web hosting servers and with the help of GeoDNS to automatically point users to the closest version of your site. That trick will also serve you as a load balancer, and your network will function better.
• It is easy to use. You can easily set it up, and after that, everything will function automatically. You will need just some DNS knowledge.
• Manage geo-restrictions. You can set geo-restrictions based on the IP address (location) of your users. You can decide which group can see what content and to where they should be pointed. It will be a very useful tool if you manage items with intellectual properties like videos, music, pictures, and more.
• Monitoring. The GeoDNS will not only do the previous, but it will monitor your DNS. It can also be set to block IP addresses from your blacklist and evade problems.

What to consider before paying for a GeoDNS?

Ok, it has a few bad sides too. One, if you chose not the right DNS provider for you, it can cost you a lot. Pay attention to their offers and see if there is a trial. Make well-thought decisions.

The other problem is that GeoDNS uses databases with IP addresses. These databases might not be updated if they are from the free databases, which could be a problem.

Conclusion

Now that you know what GeoDNS is, go on and check who the best providers in the world are and try a GeoDNS service. It will boost your site a big time!