NeuStar, Inc. today announced its new DNS Advantage™ offering. Developed by one of the world’s leading providers of managed Domain Name System (DNS) services, DNS Advantage is an advanced managed recursive DNS service. It is being provided free of charge, and enables connectivity providers, enterprises, and other organizations to offer their end users a safer, faster, and more reliable Internet experience.

Recursive servers are the first step for all Internet activity, as they begin and end the DNS resolution process that directs users to their desired destinations. The primary purpose of a recursive server is to provide an end user with an authoritative IP address that corresponds to the user’s requested domain name. The IP address will either already be in the recursive DNS server’s cache, or the server will query the Internet’s authoritative DNS servers to get the IP address.

While the authoritative DNS infrastructure deservedly receives significant attention, as it supports the address of every domain on the Internet, the majority of DNS query responses are, in fact, generated from the cache of recursive servers. Despite this, the recursive DNS infrastructure of the Internet has received little attention from the technical community, and has generally been left to ISPs to maintain and upgrade on a “best efforts” basis.

“NeuStar has invested significantly over the past eight years in developing the most secure and reliable authoritative DNS infrastructure available,” said Ben Petro, senior vice president of NeuStar Ultra Services. “We are now leveraging our experience and expertise to address the recursive DNS infrastructure, which has become a major impediment to Internet performance as well as one of its major security exposures.”

NeuStar has leveraged its position as the leading provider of authoritative DNS managed services to provide the Internet with a revolutionary approach to recursive DNS.

DNS Advantage utilizes the same global UltraDNS Directory Services Platform that provides the authoritative DNS for over 20 million domains and benefits from many of its technical innovations. The platform, with nodes at many locations around the globe, uses Anycast routing to ensure DNS requests are answered faster and more reliably than traditional recursive DNS solutions. Further, NeuStar’s proprietary technology avoids the performance and security issues associated with typical implementations commonly deployed by ISPs and other enterprises to accomplish recursive DNS.

Having a common platform for both authoritative and recursive DNS produces additional benefits. For example, should a DNS response be unavailable from the recursive server’s cache, DNS Advantage can rapidly secure a response from the locally trusted UltraDNS authoritative server on the same physical and secure network. In a revolutionary new development, DNS Advantage also supports the automated updating of recursive DNS records whenever a DNS record is updated through the UltraDNS Managed (authoritative) DNS service; this is done via a process called “name cache invalidation.” This feature provides UltraDNS Managed DNS customers with the unique capability to permit granular control of their DNS, thus rendering the traditional time-to-live (TTL) DNS record management process obsolete.

“We decided to make the switch from using in-house recursive DNS services to using DNS Advantage because we were interested in enhancing the overall reliability and performance of the Internet experience for our end users,” said Brian Young, president at inVision Networks. “Given NeuStar’s deep expertise and years of market leadership in the DNS industry, we believe they are highly qualified to offer an effective alternative to our traditional approach to DNS management. DNS Advantage helps us to improve our quality of service, build end-user loyalty, and focus our energies on our core business.”

DNS Advantage also maintains a real-time list of harmful Internet sites, warns end users when they are being redirected to these sites, and routes these users to alternate landing pages. In this way, DNS Advantage ensures a secure environment for Web browsing and protects end users from phishing, malware installations, and other well-known online dangers.

“Networks are increasingly susceptible to network threats and attacks at the same time that networks are becoming even more mission-critical to businesses,” said Lydia Leong, research director at Gartner. “Comprehensive DNS infrastructure protection that addresses both authoritative and recursive needs is a vital part of improving the availability, performance, and security of networked applications.”

The DNS Advantage service is free to use, and requires no hardware or software installation. Organizations interested in utilizing DNS Advantage are invited to visit www.dnsadvantage.com or call 1-888-367-4812.