How does one DNS record point you to your local CDN proxy server?

479 views

Let’s say I have a website that I serve through the assistance of the CDN Fastly. When I type “mywebsite.com” the DNS request resolved to an IP address that takes me to the closest available proxy server in the CDN. How does this work? Does it first direct me to a main Fastly IP address which then redirects my request to the local proxy?

In: Technology

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s a few techniques, but yeah, one option is to have the main record point you to a custom name server which serves up specific regional IP.

More popular now is anycast IPS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast. These have a single IP address but multiple routes to that IP, so you automatically select one that terminates closer to you. This is how Google does it, for example. Fastly offers an anycast IP. The CDN will then internally manage how traffic is routed back to the origin server.