Why are there no GeoDNS solutions anywhere in sight?

Thu Mar 21 07:03:01 UTC 2013

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:55:41PM -0700, Constantine A. Murenin wrote:
> On 20 March 2013 20:43, Andrew Sullivan <asullivan at dyn.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 08:28:23PM -0700, Constantine A. Murenin wrote:
> >> Any plans to make DNS itself GeoDNS-friendly?
> >
> > No.  And I say this as someone working for a vendor that provides that
> > service.
> >
> > Any sort of "Geo" DNS is what protocol people would call a "stupid DNS
> > trick".  It works in particular, narrowly-scoped ways because of the
> > loose coherence of the DNS.  But as a matter of protocol, you can't
> > really standardize it, because it's actually taking advantage of
> > certain flexibilities in the DNS and its interaction with the routing
> > system.  Turning that operational fact into a protocol feature would
> > be a bad idea.
> 
> You are coming to this from the perspective of the existing
> conventions, and the current way that GeoDNS is done through a
> Split-Horizon DNS hack.
> 
> But this is not what I want.
> 
> What I want is an ability to specify multiple A and AAAA records, and
> their locations, and make it possible for the web-browser to
> automatically select the best location based on the presumed location
> of the user.  Browsers might have a couple of rules, e.g. that Europe
> and parts of Asia are currently not directly connected to Asia, but NA
> is, and such rules would influence browser's decision to choose a
> Quebec server for a user in Japan, since it'll likely be much closer
> than the one in Moscow.
> 
> Does it sound too complicated and pointy?  Yes, it's not exactly
> trivial, and not as good as BGP, but better than having 300ms latency
> from a simple round-robin.
> 
> C.

peice of cake.   add loc records to your rrset.

/bill