If you sometimes lose your temper because a website isn’t loading fast enough, you’re not alone. Slow websites are not only annoying; the consequences for website owners can also be far-reaching. Indeed, businesses pay a high price for website downtime: 98% of companies report losing US$100,000 annually for a single hour offline.

If you own a business website, you can work on preventing disruptions by correctly configuring your Domain Name System (DNS) settings. DNS records map domain names to physical IP addresses and other names, servers, and resource records. In this post, we explore some general site usability issues and how DNS lookup tools such as Reverse IP/DNS API and DNS Database Download can contribute to fixing them.

How Reverse IP/DNS API and DNS Database Download Help Minimize Website Disruptions

Outages happen now and then, and they’re definitely worth looking into. Inaccessibility could be indicative of a security compromise, possibly leading to more significant incidents. Fortunately, integrable DNS lookup products are widely available for website operators of any size.

Reverse IP/DNS API lets you discover all domains connected to a specific IP address. DNS Database Download, meanwhile, enables users to see the historical DNS record settings of a domain. The passive DNS database these tools gather inputs from has an exhaustive pool of IP address and hosting information on all registered domains from 2008 onward.

The two DNS lookup solutions can specifically remedy the following:

1. Hosting Misconfigurations

Conflicting DNS records, such as a missing string or value in a zone file or nameserver at the domain level, presents substantial security risks. Some misconfigurations, meanwhile, result in back-and-forth queries between top-level domains (TLDs) and resolvers that could degrade your site performance, or worse, take it offline.

To ensure that you correctly set up your nameservers and other resource records, check them against what’s on file in a DNS database. Look for your domain on DNS Database Download to compare if your records match the DNS records on it. You can also find out if your domain underwent any unexpected changes and when these were applied.

2. Load Balancing Issues

Load balancing is the practice of rerouting incoming network traffic across a group of servers known as a “server farm” or a “server pool.” There are two ways to implement this—on the server-side or through the DNS or client-side. Businesses that operate in different regions across the globe should employ load balancing. Note that if you do so, though, that it is possible to encounter issues from time to time.

One way to prevent potential issues is by making sure that the IP addresses you use for failover servers don’t have ties to any bad hosts. Reverse IP/DNS API helps you with that by retrieving all hostnames linked to your IP addresses. With it, you can ensure that no other service is piggybacking on your servers.

3. Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks

While a spike in traffic may not necessarily be the work of bad actors, don’t rule out the possibility of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. DoS attacks occur when hackers flood a site with junk requests to overwhelm its servers. Any business, regardless of size, can be the target of DoS attacks.

Both Reverse IP/DNS API and DNS Database Download can validate hosts that are communicating with your network. Using Reverse IP/DNS API, you can screen IP addresses and uncover if they have potential ties to nefarious actors. You can also refer to a DNS database to learn more about indicators of compromise (IoCs) you encounter in your systems.

4. Associations with Bad Hosts

Site reliability issues result from sharing an IP address or hosting with malicious domains. Neighboring sites could be part of a botnet that’s draining up your hosting providers’ resources. It is possible, too, that some malware-laden sites exist on the same IP address, thus infecting neighboring sites. Such sites are probably blacklisted already, which impacts your hosting and site accessibility. Reverse IP/DNS API is an excellent tool that enables you to scan your IP address so you can identify any suspicious domains.

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With routine DNS lookups, site operators can guarantee their visitors’ seamless access to their online services. Reverse IP/DNS API and DNS Database Download offer webmasters several ways to boost their website’s traffic performance and increase uptime.