Domain Name System (DNS) is the Internet directory: it points people and applications to resources on public and private networks, for example allowing you to type “www.sun.com” instead of //209.249.116.195 in your browser. DNS is like virtual “electricity” for the Internet. Without DNS, mail could not be delivered, ATMs and cash registers would go offline, and few networked applications would function.
There are an estimated 7.5 million external DNS servers on the public Internet only. Communication service providers are heavily relying on DNS to point users to their favorite web site, video streaming server, ecommerce portal, or VoIP buddy on the other side of the planet. An overloaded DNS slows down the overall response time and affects the user experience. And this is the best case scenario: in 2004, a widespread Akamai DNS issue prevented popular website addresses like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Fedex, Xerox, and Apple to be resolved. In April of last year, Comcast suffered a DNS outage. In May, Google was out of commission for 15 minutes (that's pretty big compared to telco standards). Four out of five of the DNS servers in the world are vulnerable to hacking attacks.
How is this going to evolve ?
If today's 80 million registered domain names seem to represent a daunting task to manage, ENUM will dramatically increase this by providing a single number that can be translated
into the DNS system so there will be a single point of contact for an individual, be it telephone, mobile, instant messaging, or email. So how about managing 2 billions of these now ? Telecom carriers seek a simple addressing mechanism to help them deploy IP-based services such as multimedia messaging service (MMS), push-to-talk, and session initiation protocol (SIP)-based voice service. They also need to be able to implement these services across different technology environments such as global system for mobile communications (GSM), code division multiple access (CDMA), and fixed-line. ENUM makes all of this possible. To put it simply, DNS will be even more critical for all our future networked interactions.
What does it mean from a business standpoint ?
When DNS is under attack or just slow to respond due to increased traffic, the network service provider is the first one to be blamed. The user perception is "the network is slow" even though the connection is probably humming at 5 or 10Mbps or more. Next, "the web site is slow" while the web and application servers are running just fine but the DNS servers are collapsing under the load during the shopping season (and the cash register is not ringing up). As we are
increasing our reliance on the network, customers' frustration can only worsen unless service providers are tackling this issue rapidly.
How to address it ?
Today, Nominum and Sun announced an agreement to deliver record breaking industry-leading DNS and DHCP software to wireline, wireless and cable operators around the world. Sun Fire servers powered by AMD offer the choice to run Solaris 10 or Linux, and our most recent
innovation with CMT based servers will provide unrivaled performances.
