What is Traffic Director?

Do you want to give your users the best possible performance? The Traffic Director can help you to do that! With it, you can direct DNS queries through strategically placed nameservers, optimizing your query traffic with custom regionalization. Want to learn more? Let’s explore more details about how it functions and the benefits that it brings.

Explanation of Traffic Director 

Traffic director is a way to optimize and manage the traffic going to your domain by using geographical-based routing. Like this, your clients from Asia will get connected to your Asian servers; your European clients will connect to the closest servers they have in Europe and so on.
Traffic Director is a cloud-based implementation of Load Balancing (you can check our article on Load Balancing). It helps to improve the performance of your network. It can be incredibly useful for medium and large companies that need to deliver content to different parts of the world.

Some companies call this service traffic director, others Global Traffic Director (GTD) or GeoDNS director, but it is best known as GeoDNS, and that is why we use this term as the name of our service.

How does it perform?

Traffic Director gives you easy access to a powerful global load-balancing system by making configuration easy. All you need to do is set your own regional rules, and the Traffic Director will intelligently direct DNS queries through strategically-placed nameservers.

ClouDNS enables you to optimize your query traffic with custom regionalization, allowing you to divide traffic across six global regions:

• Africa
• Asia
• Europe
• North America
• Oceania
• South America

By leveraging Traffic Director, you can ensure your site visitors have a better experience. For example, through regionalized configurations, queries are redirected to the geographically closest nameservers, meaning Chicago visitors would be answered by a nameserver in the North American region rather than relying on a Asia or even overseas-based server.

In addition, If you want to ensure users from France, for example, receive the best possible experience, the Traffic Director can help you achieve this. Its regionalized configurations enable you to specify that all DNS queries from the country-based region (France) should be answered by a server located in Paris. This means you can ensure users are connected to the closest, most efficient nameserver. 

DNS lookups are the first step in making any DNS request. In order to produce the best user experience, DNS traffic must be routed efficiently and with purpose. If it is not handled optimally, it can lead to poor performance and contribute to a degraded user experience. By using a Traffic Director, you can ensure users get the speedy, reliable performance they deserve.

Typical DNS vs. Anycast vs. GeoDNS

Typically, you will have few DNS servers. A visitor trying to connect will ask at random one of them for your web server’s IP address. The visitor will be lucky if the server is close and not so happy if it is far away, but he or she will get the same IP address.
If you are using just an Anycast, multiple servers will respond to the same IP. With it, the visitor will get a response from the topologically closest nameserver. The reaction is quick, but it still can take time to connect to the web server if it is far away.
Here comes the GeoDNS/Traffic Director and its advantages. By using it, a visitor will get a different IP address, depending on his/her location. It will result in fast DNS query response and consequently fast connection to the web server.

Why should you get a Traffic Director/GeoDNS?

Multiple Geolocation target options

You can efficiently target regions, countries or whole continents. You can create an exact Geolocation load balancing. Filter your visitors and direct them to the servers which are closest.

Well-placed servers
We have located our servers close to high traffic international locations.

ClouDNS network is continuously growing. We have currently 40+ Anycast DNS locations on six continents for faster DNS query resolving.

DDoS Protected DNS
DDoS attacks are becoming a common threat. For your convenience and safety, our GeoDNS plans include DDoS Protection.
DDoS attacks and how to protect ourselves

Cost Effective
Although our plans include a limited amount of queries per month, we won’t charge you extra or temporarily stop your DNS if you get additional traffic in a month or two. If this trend continues for a more extended period, we will just propose a more suitable plan for your needs.

EDNS-client/subnet support
Our service makes decisions based on the real locations of the visitors, not on those of the DNS resolver.

SEO friendly
One of the most important factors of SEO is the speed. Thanks to the Network System of servers, the DNS queries will be resolved faster, and this will help you have higher SEO ranking.

Conclusion

GeoDNS or Traffic Director as some call it can significantly improve your DNS network. Your visitors will be happy, connecting faster to your website and you can even deliver them different content depending on their location. GeoDNS is an excellent solution for media companies who need to provide high-quality content to different users from all around the world as fast as possible.

Martin Pramatarov

Hi, I’m Martin Pramatarov. I have two degrees, a Technician of Computer Networks and an MBA (Master of Business Administration). My passion is storytelling, but I can’t hide my nerdish side too. I never forgot my interest in the Hi-tech world. I have 10 years and thousands of articles written about DNS, cloud services, hosting, domain names, cryptocurrencies, hardware, software, AI, and everything in between. I have seen the Digital revolution, the Big migration to the cloud, and I am eager to write about all the exciting new tech trends in the following years. AI and Big Data are here already, and they will completely change the world!

I hope you enjoy my articles and the excellent services of ClouDNS!