1. INCREASE AVAILABILITY, IMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE AND OPTIMIZE NETWORK
PERFORMANCE WITH GLOBAL LOAD BALANCING IN THE CLOUD
VERISIGN®
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
VerisignInc.com
The longer your Website visitors have to wait for your
site to load, the less likely they are to stay on your site.
This could result in lost revenue and brand value, all
for something that could be easily avoided. Global load
balancing in the cloud is an effective and efficient way to
boost your site’s performance, improve user experience,
increase availability and help protect your organization
from DNS-based DDoS attacks.
Hardware vs. Cloud-Based Solution:
Complex, global website traffic is commonly managed
today utilizing a hardware-based solution. The costly
combination of the initial capital outlay, operational
maintenance, future upgrades and skilled staffing
requirements makes this an expensive and complex
approach to effective traffic management.
Traffic management in the cloud was designed to meet the
complex needs of organizations like yours. Verisign puts
the power at your fingertips to improve Internet service
performance and availability, while improving end-user
experience and lowering your Total Cost of Ownership.
Standard traffic management services include:
Failover: helps you avoid outages by routing users around
slow or inoperable sites. The service monitors websites
or Internet services using a variety of protocols, including
DNS, Ping (ICMP) and SMTP, to determine system health
and provide a back-up answer in response to queries
when the primary service is unavailable.
Geo-Location: enhances user experience by reducing
latency and increasing uptime. Geo-Location globally
directs Internet traffic among worldwide data centers,
CDNs or cloud platform providers by delivering a DNS
response based on the recursive resolver’s geographic
location. The service also enables the delivery of location-
specific content.
Weighted Load Balancing: enables you to optimize
infrastructure usage by balancing end-user traffic among
multiple data centers by specifying the relative amount
of traffic each server should receive. When this service is
activated, the service responds with different authoritative
DNS responses each time a particular query is received in
proportion to the weights you specify.
GLOBAL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IN THE CLOUD
Verisign’s easily deployed, traffic management
services enable you to use any relevant data, including
performance metrics, to direct Internet traffic to the
appropriate content delivery network (CDN) based on
dynamic information, including time-of-day, geographic
region and pricing. Additionally, traffic management helps
protect your organization from the risk of outages caused
by DDoS attacks. Our services were built to leverage the
benefits of our proven, globally deployed and secure
DNS infrastructure.
DATA SHEET
Verisign Public
2. As shown above, end user queries are directed to a
data center or cloud platform based on pre-determined
variables.
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT FEATURES AND BENEFITS
Supported by Verisign’s trusted and reliable global
infrastructure, benefits include:
Cloud-Based Delivery Model
•• Enhanced availability and performance of your critical
Internet services
•• Scalability: vastly deployed, cloud-based DNS
infrastructure allows your organization to scale
the service based on your unique and evolving
requirements
•• Lower Total Cost of Ownership: No capital expenses
and lower operating costs in comparison to hardware
solutions
•• Fast and seamless deployment (typically within
three days)
•• Decreases the risk of downtime due to DNS-based
DDoS attacks
Real-Time Location and Availability Metrics Help
Direct Website Traffic
•• Geo-location of the recursive resolver using a leading
IP geo-location service
•• Integrated system-health monitoring utilizing Verisign
probes
Customer Portal
•• Enables unlimited access and control from multiple
users anywhere
•• Offers the option to use a default configuration or to
customize your configuration prior to deployment
DYNAMIC TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
For complex, global organizations with the need to
manage traffic patterns dynamically based on real-
time information, we have developed Dynamic Traffic
Management. This service option enables you to
dynamically shape your company’s network traffic utilizing
rules-based scripts with virtually unlimited options for
customization.
Dynamic Traffic Management is available as a value-
added service option of Managed DNS.
2 Verisign Public
User Location
Verisign Managed DNSEnd User
Service Instances
Verisign Health Checks
DC1 DC2 AWS
Recursive
Server
3. 3Verisign Public
Verisign Traffic Management Services
FAILOVER
Monitor service availability and failover to a backup server, data
center, CDN or cloud platform provider when issues occur.
Features include:
•• Reply with backup A or CNAME in the event of a service
issue
•• Supports active/active and active/passive configurations
•• Multiple, geographically dispersed probes help ensure test
validity
•• View status of each monitored element, including trace
routes
•• Customize tests by defining probe intervals, evaluation
strings and protocol (HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, PING or DNS)
•• Email notification when failover occurs
•• Works with A and CNAME records
•• Works in combination with all other traffic management
features
•• DNSSEC-enabled
GEO LOCATION
Dynamically returns different DNS responses based on the
location of the recursive resolver making a DNS query.
Features include:
•• Highly granular location, including continent, country, state
and city
•• Works with all resource record types
•• Works in combination with other traffic management
services
•• Utilizes a highly accurate, commercial database to map IP
addresses to location
•• Supports IPv6 DNS queries
•• Works in combination with all other traffic management
features
•• DNSSEC-enabled
WEIGHTED LOAD BALANCING
Distribute traffic among multiple servers based on the configured
distribution weight, enabling you to control the amount of traffic
each server, cloud platform service or CDN receives.
Features include:
•• Highly flexible, supporting weights from 1 to 999
•• Works with A, AAAA and CNAME records
•• Sticky responses ensure the same response is provided
every time the same recursive makes an identical query
•• Works in combination with Geo Location and Failover
features
•• DNSSEC-enabled
DYNAMIC TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
A cloud based, DDoS-attack resilient, global load balancing
service that allows you to use any relevant data, including
performance metrics, to dynamically determine DNS
responses utilizing a custom script. The Lua scripting feature
is exclusively available as part of Verisign Dynamic Traffic
Management.
Features include:
•• Scripting language: Lua 5.1
•• Name value pairs (e.g., variables) available at both account
and domain levels:
-- Updated via the Web portal or a SOAP API
-- Updates typically propagate worldwide in under 30
seconds
•• Health status of hosts probed with the Verisign health-check
system can be used as scripting parameters:
•• Built-in scripting parameters
-- Date/Time
-- IP address geo-location
-- IP address matching
-- Sticky random number generation based on incoming IP
•• Works with A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NAPTR, PTR, SRV and
TXT resource records types
•• DNSSEC-enabled
•• Sample scripts and detailed documentation provided
