DNS Routing
DNS Routing is a technique that uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to direct traffic to different servers or endpoints based on various criteria, such as geographic location, server load, or network conditions. It involves configuring DNS records (like A, AAAA, or CNAME records) to return different IP addresses in response to DNS queries, enabling intelligent distribution of user requests across multiple resources. This is commonly used for load balancing, failover, content delivery optimization, and implementing global server load balancing (GSLB).
Developers should learn DNS Routing when building scalable, high-availability applications that require efficient traffic management across distributed servers or cloud regions. It is essential for use cases like reducing latency by routing users to the nearest data center, balancing loads to prevent server overload, and ensuring failover by redirecting traffic to backup servers during outages. This is particularly valuable in microservices architectures, global web applications, and services using content delivery networks (CDNs).