CZ.NIC bolsters its .CZ DNS anycast by launching a new site in Sydney

The DNS node in the Sydney datacenter should help with better availability and lower query latency not only for the .CZ domain and its users, but also for the domains of partners hosted by CZ.NIC.

CZ.NIC, the Czech national domain administrator, has launched a new foreign DNS site in Sydney, Australia. This is the first site on this continent and its establishment marks the continuing expansion of CZ.NIC’s own DNS infrastructure worldwide and the enhancement of the robustness of the DNS anycast. The DNS node in the Sydney datacenter should help with better availability and lower query latency not only for the .CZ domain and its users, but also for the domains of partners hosted by CZ.NIC.

“With the launch of the new location in Sydney, Australia, we have now covered the last remaining continent that did not have our infrastructure (unless we consider Antarctica as well). This is the twenty-first node outside the Czech Republic that is served by our DNS anycast. This step helped us reduce the latency in the remote region of Australia and Oceania by more than twice from the original 190 ms to the current approximately 90 ms,” explains Tomáš Hála, IT director of the CZ.NIC Association. “In Sydney we use the authoritative DNS server KnotDNS developed at CZ.NIC Labs. Establishing this node is definitely not the end of our work. We are preparing several other nodes, as we are analyzing DNS data in cooperation with our colleagues from the ADAM project and evaluating the most suitable locations for new DNS nodes.”

In addition to the three locations in the Czech Republic, CZ.NIC servers are operated in 13 other countries. In Europe, the nodes are located in Austria (Vienna), Germany (Frankfurt am Main), Great Britain (London), Sweden (Stockholm), Italy (Milan) and Slovakia (Bratislava). In the US, the Association operates two nodes in Reston (in cooperation with ICANN) and, from 2021, in the LINX NoVA peering center; another, more powerful node is located on the West Coast (Seattle). In South America, there are two more in Brazil (São Paulo) and Chile (Santiago de Chile). In Asia, the Association operates DNS servers in Japan (Tokyo) and also in Singapore (Singapore). This spring, the first site on the African continent was established in Johannesburg, South Africa.