What is AnyCast?
AnyCast benefits the end user who sends a DNS request to an AnyCast cluster. This allows for geographic redundancy for name servers. A cluster, that is, an entire group of servers capable of processing the request, is assigned a common address. AnyCast then always calculates the shortest route from the request to one of the responding DNS servers.
The shortest route is determined according to various criteria. For a user in Germany, for example, at first glance, a server in Germany is the shortest path. However, it is not necessarily the geographical distance that is decisive, but the “hops” (intermediaries) along the way. The current load of a server is also taken into account when distributing requests. This helps counter, for example, DDoS attacks, as the load is distributed among different servers and requests can be processed continuously.
The major advantages of AnyCast are fault tolerance, load distribution, and reduced access times, while the disadvantages may include more difficult error analysis and synchronization between servers.
The name servers of hosting.fr also offer AnyCast operation. The primary name server “ns1.routing.net” does not use AnyCast, just like “ns3.routing.net”, whose processing would take place as a last resort. In contrast, the secondary server “ns2.routing.net” uses AnyCast. This AnyCast cluster consists of servers located in different places across Europe.