Latency is one of our biggest enemies on the Internet. If a visitor needs to wait a long time for their result, they can get angry and leave the page. Not satisfied visitors means fewer sales and fewer chances to get them back. Luckily there is a service that can help you reduce the latency dramatically, and it is called GeoDNS.

What is GeoDNS?
Between the request of a visitor and the response of the authoritative nameserver, there is a long way. That is especially true if the server is on another continent. What we can do to improve this process is to provide more nameservers, closer to the users, and have a system that redirects queries to the closest server. A smart load balancing mechanism that can locate the origin of the queries.

Know more: LAN protocols

GeoDNS is a such a system that provides strategically located name servers on different continents and a process of distributing the traffic based on the locations of the queries.

How does GeoDNS work?
When a user sends a query, a DNS server will analyze it, reading the IP. Based on this information, the query will be sent to the closest nameserver. This will reduce the waiting time significantly.

Contrary to another popular solution called Anycast, the GeoDNS will provide distinct answers based on the IP of the user. Anycast is great, but GeoDNS is one step greater.