Tag: DNS outage

DNS outage – Everything you need to know

Posted on by Owen

Imagine you have been preparing for months for the special sale of your e-shop. Clients impatiently wait for the countdown to point out the beginning. And when they all try to access your website, your domain name can’t be loaded. Clients receive an error message on every try. Yes, pretty sure your e-shop is experiencing a DNS outage.

And the issue is that this can make your clients angry or disappointed. You will lose money, and your reputation can be affected.

Better be prepared and know more about DNS outages. Here you have everything you need to know. Including how to prevent them!

What’s a DNS outage?

DNS outage or DNS downtime, as it’s also called, is a time interval during which a domain name can’t be resolved to its IP address.

The Domain Name System (DNS) and its resolution process are essential for accessing any domain name. If there’s a failure causing the DNS not to work, the necessary translation from domain name to IP address won’t happen. So the domain won’t be located, and therefore, its content won’t be accessible to visitors.

What causes a DNS outage?

A DNS outage can happen due to different causes:

  • Human errors. Yes, humans are behind a large number of DNS outages. For example, a script error, a misconfiguration, or a single typo on the IP address of the domain name can cause a DNS failure.
  • DDoS attacks. If the traffic overloads sent by attackers make your DNS servers crash, the domain name will be down.
  • Lack of redundancy. Of course, you can run your domain name with only an authoritative server, but it can be risky. Software or hardware failures, updates, regular maintenance, or a cyber attack can shut it down.
  • Propagation delays. Online businesses must delete, edit, or add different DNS records regularly. Propagating these modifications or updates across a complete network can take time. Technically, this is not an error or a cause of a DNS outage, but visitors who can’t reach your domain will perceive it like that. Once the DNS propagation gets completed, everything will be ok.

How to prevent a DNS outage?

Look for redundancy

Redundancy is key! You can use Secondary DNS services. Using multiple Secondary DNS servers, you can set them as Secondary authoritative nameservers. In case the Primary gets attacked or suffers downtime, the Secondary servers will answer the DNS requests of your clients.

Use DNS failover

This technology can automatically redirect traffic to a different server. In case of a server’s failure, DNS failover will get activated for the DNS resolution process to keep going. So your website will be accessible even if a server falls.

DNS load balancing

Load balancing is a great practice to avoid a DNS outage. While distributing traffic through the available servers, it can handle traffic spikes and prevent servers from being overloaded.

Conclusion

Preventing DNS outages on your online business is possible! Take action now! Don’t let it stop your operation.

Benefits of using a Monitoring service

Posted on by Owen

Precisely what does a Monitoring service entail?

Monitoring services are a broad category of goods that enable analysts to check whether IT equipment is online and operating as expected, as well as to address any issues they may uncover. It offers comprehensive information about the condition of your servers, which you use for a number of services, including web, email, DNS, and others. Many Monitoring service plans and options are available, ranging from thorough inspections to advanced tools that can evaluate a product’s performance in great detail and even automate repairs when defects are found. Actually, so-called Monitoring Checks are used to do this. There are many different kinds, and every company offers a selection. TCP monitoring, DNS monitoring, and other popular ones are among the most well-known and frequently used ones. However, many others are also advantageous. So let’s look at the popular ones of them now.

Types of Monitoring service checks

There are various ways to analyze a service’s uptime or downtime. In addition, you are informed if a check is unsuccessful. Here are a few examples of the most typical check types:

  • ICMP Ping Monitoring check

This check offers details on network activity involving a specific domain or IP address. The system tests an IP address using the ICMP ping protocol.

  • TCP Monitoring check

Using the provided IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) and port number in the Transmission Control Protocol, the system establishes a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection.

  • UDP Monitoring check

The computer verifies the precise IP address to the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port number you or your system administrator specified.

  • DNS Monitoring check

The hostname that you or your administrator provided is checked in DNS by the system. You can also select the query type for the specified IP address.

Benefits of using it

You should employ a Monitoring service for a number of good reasons.

  1. Unwanted power outages can be avoided.

You might be able to identify and prevent a number of problems that lead to downtime and DNS outages with the help of a monitoring system. It is a straightforward technique. When you have up-to-date information, you can react very rapidly.

  1. You can now see more of your network.

The Monitoring service increases visibility by displaying real-time network performance data, issuing alerts via email and text, and presenting it in an understandable manner.

  1. Better security

Sometimes downtime is caused by fraudulent attacks like DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and DoS (Denial of Service), not network issues. Monitored providers will catch any unwelcome infections and keep your organization secure, whether there is an effort to infiltrate an enterprise network or a raging part of spyware is trying to sneak in.

Conclusion

Huge congrats! You’re getting closer to using the Monitoring service. Why? Because you understand its objective, advantages, and various check types. So, what happens next? To put it into action. Good luck!