DNS Anycast as traffic optimizer?

Wed Sep 1 18:05:59 UTC 2004

      On Wed, 1 Sep 2004, Steve Francis wrote:
    > I'm sure there is research out there...

Why?  :-)

    > ...how good/bad using DNS anycast is as a kludgey traffic optimiser?

I'd hardly call it a kludge.  It's been standard best-practice for over a
decade.

    > THe question is, what is that "some" relationship?  80% as good as
    > Akamai?  Terrible?

Should be much higher than Akamai, since that's not what they're
optimizing for.  If you want nearest server, anycast will give you that
essentially 100% of the time.  Akamai tries to get queries to servers that
have enough available capacity to handle the load.  Since they're handling
bursty, high-bandwidth applications, rather than DNS.

                                -Bill