redirecting overseas requests to local servers

[Markus Stumpf]

On Mon, Sep 06, 1999 at 05:42:40PM -0700, Patrick Greenwell wrote:
> > > > > UltraDNS provides a service where you can reach the *topologically*
> > > > > closest server according to BGP. http://www.ultradns.com.
> Basically: (beware, bad ascii art follows)
> 
>                                        
> +--------+      +-----+       +-----+        +-----+      +------+
> | client |<---->| IGP |<----->| BGP |<------>| BGP |<---->|server|
> +--------+      +-----+       +-----+<-      +-----+      +------+
>                                        \ 
>                                          \ 
>                                            \   +-----+      +------+ 
>                                              ->| BGP |<---->|server| 
>                                                +-----+      +------+
> 

Ok, so far so good.
Routers exchange routes via BGP to get their routing straight, but
(maybe I am too dumb to understand that ...)
why for heavens sake, would a DNS SERVER want to know anything about
routing (if it isn't running on a multihomed machine itself).

To be honest I never really understood what "topology" could be used
for in a serious way in bind.
A few days ago I saw an email where someone claimed they had "dramatically"
increased their DNS answer speed by heavily using the topology feature.
On the other side I remember a post by Mark Andrews in this forum not to
long ago where he explained that bind keeps its own statistics on
reachability and speed of answers (or does this only hold for root DNS
servers?) and the choosing algorithm is based on this data.
So, if I do not restart bind every hour or so, why would I want bind
to know about routing and topology?

	\Maex

-- 
SpaceNet GmbH             |   http://www.Space.Net/   | Yeah, yo mama dresses
Research & Development    | mailto:maex-sig at Space.Net | you funny and you need
Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 |  Tel: +49 (89) 32356-0    | a mouse to delete files
D-80807 Muenchen          |  Fax: +49 (89) 32356-299  |