a beginner's questions on failover using DNS

[Pete Ehlke]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 05:15:46PM +0000, Rosie lee wrote:

<long lines reformatted. Please teach your editor to wrap lines at less
than 80 columns.>

>  
> I've just started investigating in this field and tried to find
> solutions for failover/load balacing using DNS (I also looked up some
> router solutions like those from Cisco which are far too expensive for
> SMEs). 
>  
> I checked the archives and found something related but quite a while
> ago. Hope somebody give  me any most recent information. 

The DNS is not meant to assist in circuit failover or load balancing.
Attempts to force it in to this role are virtually always failures. What
you want to accomplish *can* be done with freely available software and
without expensive hardware, but your DNS server is the wrong tool for
the job. 

You mention two connections into the same company. Talk to your upstream
providers about how to use BGP to accomplish what you want.

-Pete