Why are there no GeoDNS solutions anywhere in sight?

Thu Mar 21 04:17:16 UTC 2013

You can set up GeoDNS without anycast with PowerDNS and Bind easily
enough (I found PowerDNS easier to setup). If you are using Bind you can
use the geoip patch or use views which is a quick hacky way.

http://doc.powerdns.com/html/geo.html

I can't comment on either solution if it supports getting the real
remote IP address (PowerDNS does for the PipeBackend if its enabled so I
assume it may be available) rather than the address of the resolver.

For management I would lean towards PowerDNS of the two, you can stick
on any of the available web interfaces if you want and use the SQL
backend (replication can be used here to update records on slaves). The
country management would still need to be done out of files though the
records themselves would be edited/served out of the database.

I don't run Bind any more but if you want a copy of the configs for
PowerDNS or other details email me offlist and I am happy to help.

On 21/03/2013 11:28 AM, Constantine A. Murenin wrote:
> 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 GeoDNS solution, just to get their hands on GeoDNS.  (Hey, for
> 25$/mo, I might 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
> infrastructure, or use GeoDNS from any of the plentiful free or
> complementary DNS solutions 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 copies of `nsd` on distinct sockets, and redirecting
> incoming DNS traffic through 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), with 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
> cent of actual cases, and will not benefit from the extra webapp
> redundancy one 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 of 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 to Fremont.  Why is there no way to do any of
> this?
>
> Cheers,
> Constantine.
>