F5 Enhances Scalability, Security in DNS Services Suite

Solution improves overall performance, reduces costs for enterprise customers.

Note: ESJ’s editors carefully choose vendor-issued press releases about new or upgraded products and services. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key features but make no claims as to the accuracy of the vendor's statements.

F5 Networks, Inc. has announced dynamic services to help organizations intelligently respond to DNS queries and application requests, consolidate infrastructure, and provide end-to-end protection for their essential DNS systems. Customers can reduce internal and in-network response latency by up to 80 percent, seamlessly scale their systems up to 10x as demand grows, and provide advanced DNS security for physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

F5 BIG-IP solutions intelligently manage and distribute DNS and application requests based on business policies, access demands, and network conditions -- yielding an optimized and reliable experience for users as well as IT personnel. With today’s announcement, F5 is introducing new capabilities -- including DNS caching and resolving, DNSSEC validation, monitoring, and other performance enhancements -- building on previously announced solutions for Communications Service Providers and DNSSEC signing.

“As applications and DNS infrastructures have become more complex to address security and performance concerns, organizations are finding it impossible to scale and efficiently manage their systems,” said Jason Needham, VP, core and traffic management, F5 Networks. “With F5, customers enjoy a complete global DNS and application delivery solution with the intelligence to enhance the security, performance, and availability of their essential DNS services.”

With the growing complexity of online applications, the volume of total DNS queries has reportedly doubled in the last five years, and a modern Web site may require more than 100 DNS name resolutions to render the full page. This increase in requests has led to slower page load times and generally hindered application availability for users.

IT teams have typically sought to address DNS performance and scaling concerns by simply adding more DNS servers, outsourcing DNS functions, or deploying a variety of point products in their internal infrastructures designed to optimize performance. However, all of these approaches have proven to be costly and inefficient.

F5’s dynamic DNS services enable customers to:

Easily optimize, scale, and control DNS infrastructures: F5’s BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager product seamlessly scales DNS capabilities up to 10x as an authoritative DNS server, dramatically increasing query response rates for maximum uptime. Additionally, F5’s DNS iRules technology provides organizations with customizable control over how specific DNS requests are handled, giving customers the ability to focus on their most critical needs.

Provide end-to-end protection for crucial DNS systems: F5 solutions provide comprehensive protection for DNS and applications with built in safeguards to handle extremely high volumes of DNS requests -- up to 10x more than without F5 -- and shield systems from threats such as DDoS attacks. Customers enjoy the full DNSSEC solution, including both real-time DNSSEC signing for authoritative server responses and high-performance DNSSEC client validation for end-to-end protection.

Deliver an enhanced, reliable user experience: F5 enables faster Web browsing by reducing the effects of latency up to 80 percent with DNS caching and resolving functions, helping internal and in-network visitors quickly find what they’re looking for and resulting in a more seamless experience for both users and administrators.

With the added efficiency F5 solutions provide, IT teams can significantly reduce the number of DNS servers required to support their systems, consolidating deployments and cutting costs. And because F5’s DNS services are easily deployed with BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, they can be combined with other BIG-IP products to further enhance the security and performance of applications.

F5’s DNS services and the company’s other technologies described in this announcement are available now with BIG-IP version 11.2 software.

For more information, visit www.f5.com.

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