VeriSign, Inc. today announced it is combining the Domain Name System’s (DNS) two primary query routing methods, unicast and anycast, into a single managed service, delivering a hybrid approach that uniquely optimizes the availability and performance of websites, email and Web services. As a cloud-based service leveraging this hybrid approach, Verisign Managed DNS helps optimize performance and reliability of domain name server queries and responses, while relieving companies of the cost and burden of maintaining their own DNS infrastructure.

“Before today, organizations generally had to rely on one approach or the other for DNS resolution—a reality that forced companies to make trade-offs between performance and availability,” said Ben Petro, senior vice president of Verisign’s Network Intelligence and Availability business. “By deploying a hybrid of unicast and anycast technologies at 17 of our authoritative name server locations, Verisign is empowering organizations to easily and flexibly manage their DNS environments based on their own tolerances for risk.”

Verisign Managed DNS now combines IP anycast and unicast DNS routing technologies between 17 of its fully redundant, globally distributed DNS resolution supersites. Unicast, in which a single client communicates with a single server, is viewed as ideal for situations that require high availability. Anycast, which uses mirrored servers represented by a common IP address, can minimize transaction latency.

Verisign’s hybrid approach to managed DNS helps minimize transactional latency while optimizing availability by anycasting to a smaller number of name servers within a zone, while unicasting to the remaining servers. By taking advantage of this flexible, multimode approach, companies gain more options for routing traffic based on their own goals for availability and transaction performance. With multiple discrete physical nodes providing operational redundancy, Verisign is able to optimally distribute query loads to improve availability and reliability.

“A hybrid DNS query infrastructure offers enormous advantages for both availability and performance, yet for most organizations, maintaining such a system would be prohibitively expensive and complicated,” said Jennifer Pigg, vice president at Yankee Group. “Our research shows that enterprises are not willing to compromise either availability or performance, but can’t afford to build and maintain an on-premise DNS solution and are pursing managed DNS services.”

Recent studies show the market for managed DNS services is growing. A 2010 survey of end users by Merrill Research for Verisign discovered of the 58 percent of respondents who currently manage their own DNS servers, 28 percent say they are interested in outsourcing DNS management, citing cost savings as the primary reason. Of all companies surveyed, nearly three in four had Web infrastructure goals of less than 10 hours of downtime per year, while one in four targeted less than five minutes of downtime per year. Performance goals were similarly stringent, with one in four organizations requiring near zero latency.

Verisign has also significantly improved the user interface for its Managed DNS online tool, simplifying the DNS management experience while providing customers with more control and flexibility to determine their routing preferences.

Until April 30, 2011, Verisign is offering a special package of services comprised of its unrivaled suite of network intelligence and availability products—including DNS hosting, DDoS protection, and threat intelligence—all of which leverage the Verisign expertise garnered from operating a global, high-availability network with operational accuracy and stability 100 percent of the time for more than 12 years. The package is the only offering of its kind designed to help customers keep their online presence available and secure at prices very appealing to businesses of all sizes. For more information, call 703-948-4140 or 866-367-0095.