What's under the hood of our new DNS service
First, let's do a quick refresher: the DNS (Domain Name System) service is what makes it possible for a domain name to open a specific website. This system tells you which of all the servers on the Internet your website is hosted on. Typically, a specific set of 2 DNS servers and 2 IPs correspond to each server and must be added in your domain's admin panel for the system to work. Each server also has a DNS service installed that processes DNS queries and displays the appropriate website when a visitor types your domain into the browser.
With our new centralized DNS setup, we no longer need the DNS service installed on each of our production servers hosting your website. We can move all of our DNS services to a completely separate cluster of multiple servers. This cluster is dedicated to DNS service only and is geographically dispersed across the globe thanks to Anycast network routing technology. Centralized DNS also allows us to have a single pair of DNS servers and IPs for all of the servers managed by SiteGround, and these are:
ns1.siteground.net
ns2.siteground.net
What are the benefits of our new DNS service?
Faster domain resolution and faster website loading
When a visitor searches for your website's domain, the first thing the browser does is perform a DNS lookup to see which IP the domain resolves to and connects to the server with that IP. With the previous DNS setup, lookup requests coming from a different continent than your server were handled a bit slower due to the physical distance between the visitor and the server resolving their domain. Now, with centralized DNS working across five different geographic locations and multiple instances, resolution is handled by the closest node, saving network delays and improving your website's loading speed.
Improved redundancy
As the new DNS setup relies on multiple geographically dispersed machines, it is highly resilient. For example, if one of the DNS servers fails, DNS requests will be handled by the second closest point, which is up and running. This setup also protects against DDoS attacks, as if there is a large amount of malicious traffic, it will be distributed across multiple DNS machines and it will be much harder for such an attack to succeed. On top of that, the DNS service is scalable and new machines can be easily added whenever more resources are needed.
If you're using your domain simultaneously for your SiteGround hosting and other services (for example, your MX records point to Gmail), having the DNS service hosted in a different location from your website has one more advantage. In case your hosting server has an issue, your DNS will continue to work and your external services will continue to resolve without being affected.
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Seamless migrations between servers
It's part of our job to move data, whether it's transferring your hosting account from old to new hardware, from a server with cPanel to servers with Site Tools , or from an old data center to Google Cloud infrastructure , qatar whatsapp number data migrations are a common part of our day to day. Whenever we migrate servers, one of the biggest challenges is managing DNS zones. The new server comes with new nameservers and once websites are transferred, domains need to be pointed to these new ones. We've been updating them automatically for all domains managed through our control panels, but external domains needed a manual change by webmasters. In both cases, there would be DNS propagation with a possible impact on downtime. With the new centralized DNS it will be much easier to migrate and perform server updates in the future. In most cases, these migrations will not involve any kind of DNS configuration changes, avoiding any issues caused by propagation.
More comfort and ease of use for you
With decentralized DNS, people who manage multiple sites on different servers need to keep track of different sets of DNS servers, which can be inconvenient. The new centralized DNS simplifies multiple website management processes for our users, as all domains for all websites hosted on our platform, regardless of their hosting account or server, can now use the same DNS server pair.
When will the new DNS service be available?
All new websites created on our platform are already using the new DNS service. For previously created websites, we are beginning a gradual switch to the new centralized DNS. We will update the DNS servers for all domains registered with us automatically. For external domains used with our system, we will inform our customers by email, confirming when it will be safe to update their DNS settings to the new ones. The old DNS system will remain supported for several more months, until the migration to the new one is fully completed.
