[161610] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Why are there no GeoDNS solutions anywhere in sight?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Rocca)
Wed Mar 20 23:47:38 2013
From: Peter Rocca <rocca@start.ca>
To: "Constantine A. Murenin" <mureninc@gmail.com>, "North American Network
Operators' Group" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:44:58 -0400
In-Reply-To: <CAPKkNb63hqpT4CLcQ-TiMfYZtrqqT=1TRouKkQGn-QwdHCJO3g@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
The first hit on Google for "dns geolocation" results in http://backreferen=
ce.org/2010/02/01/geolocation-aware-dns-with-bind/, or the first hit for "d=
ns geolocation patch" leads you to http://www.caraytech.com/geodns/
-----Original Message-----
From: Constantine A. Murenin [mailto:mureninc@gmail.com]=20
Sent: March-20-13 11:28 PM
To: North American Network Operators' Group
Subject: Why are there no GeoDNS solutions anywhere in sight?
Dear NANOG@,
Not every operator has the ability to setup their own anycast.
Not every operator is big enough to be paying 25 USD/month for a managed Ge=
oDNS solution, just to get their hands on GeoDNS. (Hey, for 25$/mo, I migh=
t as well have an extra POP or two!)
Why so many years after the concept has been introduced and has been found =
useful, can one not setup GeoDNS in under 5 minutes on one's own infrastruc=
ture, or use GeoDNS from any of the plentiful free or complementary DNS sol=
utions that are offered by providers like he.net, xname.org, linode.com and=
others?
I'm an NSD3 user and have a POP in Europe and NA, and, frankly, the easiest=
(and only) solution I see right now is, on both servers, running two copie=
s of `nsd` on distinct sockets, and redirecting incoming DNS traffic throug=
h a firewall based on IPv4 /8 address allocation (RIPE and AfriNIC -- to an=
`nsd` instance with zone files with an `A` record of a POP in Europe; ARIN=
, APNIC, LACNIC and the rest of /8 allocations -- an `A` record for NA), wi=
th zone replication managed through git. Yeap, it's rough, and quite ugly,=
and unmaintainable, and will give optimal results only in 80 to 95 per cen=
t of actual cases, and will not benefit from the extra webapp redundancy on=
e otherwise might have had, but what other alternatives could be configured=
in 5 or 15 minutes?
Any plans to make DNS itself GeoDNS-friendly?
When editing a zone file in `emacs`, why can one not say that one has
3 web servers -- Europe, NA, Asia -- and have the dns infrastructure and/or=
the web-browser figure out the rest?
Why even stop there: all modern browsers usually know the exact location o=
f the user, often with street-level accuracy. It should be possible to say=
that you have a server in Fremont, CA and Toronto, ON or Beauharnois, QC, =
and automatically have all East Coast users go to Toronto, and West Coast t=
o Fremont. Why is there no way to do any of this?
Cheers,
Constantine.
