Network infrastructure vendor Infoblox this week announced a new hardware appliance to help accelerate DNS delivery.
The Infoblox-4010 DNS appliance is all about helping service providers deliver DNS services at scale. The new appliance can service more than 200,000 DNS queries per second, according to Infoblox. When clustered together with multiple appliances the system can scale up to as many as 3 billion DNS queries per second.
“ISP infrastructure is increasingly being stressed by the advent of smartphones, driving bandwidth requirements higher while also stressing the DNS infrastructure, where even a single smartphone wake-up requires 36 DNS lookups,” Kevin Dickson, vice president of product management at Infoblox told InternetNews.com.
Inside the Infoblox 4010 is a an Intel Xeon 5650 running at 2.66 GHz with 6 Cores and 4 x 300 GB hard drives and 24 GB of DDR3 RAM. The base operating system is the Infoblox NIOS (network infrastructure operating system) which is built on top off a Linux kernel. For the DNS features, the Infoblox system is based on the open source BIND DNS server, including what Dickson referred to as, “extensive enhancements to add management functionality.”
“ISPs typically run their DNS caching services on open-source BIND software running on generic servers, which require frequent patching to the software and underlying operating systems,” Dickson said. “As a result they end up spending considerable staff time and effort, which equates to significant operational cost, to administer and upgrade these systems.”
In addition to the core DNS functionality, Infoblox also has a feature that enables service providers to monetize their DNS traffic.
“This feature allows service providers to redirect Internet search errors – such as typos or incorrect URLs – to a third party landing-page that includes additional information, sponsored links, advertisements.,” Dickson said. “ISPs can generate additional revenue from purchases made through these advertisement links.”
Dickson noted that NXDOMAIN Query Redirection provides a potential revenue increase of $1-3 USD per customer per year.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
