IBM NS1 Connect Managed DNS and Traffic Steering for AWS Workloads

My primary use case for IBM NS1 Connect is improving the availability and the response time for our internet-facing applications by directing users to healthy and appropriate endpoints. For example, organizations with application instances in multiple regions can use health checks and traffic steering policies to avoid sending new DNS responses to an unhealthy endpoint.

With respect to how I use health checks and traffic steering policies in my day-to-day work, it helps us improve application availability and reduce latency. For example, if the application is running in two different regions and one region becomes unhealthy or starts responding slowly, IBM NS1 Connect helps us detect the endpoint issues. A heartbeat request is sent to both servers, and if any of the servers does not acknowledge the request, then IBM NS1 Connect will assume that this server has gone down. With this, we can redirect new requests to the healthy alternative server, which reduces the need for manual DNS changes during incidents, helping us to minimize disruption for users.

IBM NS1 Connect impacts my organization positively by saving eight engineer hours per month; at a fully loaded cost of $40 per hour, that is $320 monthly or $3,840 annually in labor value. This avoids downtime during important incidents that require our support.

Regarding specific incidents where IBM NS1 Connect helped avoid downtime or saved significant time or money, one example is that we found routing users to a geographically nearest location did not always provide the fastest connection. We used performance-based DNS routing with IBM NS1 Connect, which reported a 10 to 15 percent latency improvement, allowing users at the 75th percentile to reach good responses while we could direct them to the nearest geographically located server. Additionally, we had a complex traffic steering situation that saved millions.

The best features IBM NS1 Connect offers include the authoritative DNS filter chain, traffic steering policies, and endpoint health monitoring, along with its API-first automation and DNS reporting, which are all some of the most valuable features.

Out of those features, I find myself relying on the traffic steering policies the most because we detect the endpoints and steer new DNS responses towards healthy alternatives. This is very helpful because whenever there is a massive amount of requests coming into the region or to the server, and for a better user interface and customer experience, we should not show the user that the server is down. We can reroute the request to the server nearest to that region, making it an important capability. The authoritative DNS ensures DNS queries for domains and reliable DNS resolution are essential for users, particularly to discover application endpoints, but it alone does not guarantee this. The API-first automation automates DNS configurations and changes through APIs and infrastructure as code workflows, reducing repetitive manual work and the risk of human error. The DNS reporting and analytics help teams understand query volume, traffic distribution, and unusual behavior under the support of troubleshooting and capacity planning.

I believe that while every service provided by IBM NS1 Connect is crucial for the future, there are areas for improvement such as making filter chain configuration easier, improving monitoring and incident troubleshooting, and possibly enhancing documentation and onboarding facilities.

Concerning the needed improvements, with regard to filter chain configuration, I think advanced traffic policies can be difficult for new teams. A visual policy builder or plain language explanations, or a simulator that shows which endpoint each rule selects, would be very helpful for new team members and would significantly reduce configuration mistakes while speeding up onboarding.

My experience with IBM NS1 Connect spans one and a half years, during which I have used it in production and pilot environments. I have worked with some of the main important features.

IBM NS1 Connect is stable so far, and we have not faced any issues yet.

The scalability of IBM NS1 Connect depends on the plan, including query record limits, monitor limits, and filter limits, but generally, the application is scalable along with the DNS traffic profile.

Our experience with customer support has been mixed; while some team members are really helpful and responsive, there have been instances where responses to complex technical issues are slower because they need to evaluate and provide support. Moreover, I believe subscribing to a higher plan would ensure immediate support to prevent losing too many customers, particularly premium customers.

I would rate customer support as three out of ten.

Previously, we have been using IBM Management Connect since the very beginning.

Regarding return on investment, this automation saves eight engineer hours per month, which at $40 per hour translates to about $320 monthly and approximately $3,840 annually, allowing us to save around four to five lakhs of rupees.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that before selecting this product, these factors were crucial because every organization considers these aspects before making a purchase decision. My experience indicates that the initial technical setup is fairly straightforward, and once DNS architecture and requirements are clear, the advanced graphic tools and integrations require some planning and testing. Licensing poses a more challenging part since the cost depends on the plan, DNS query volume, check monitors, filter limits, and additional capabilities. Some of our clients have described the pricing as expensive compared to alternatives, so I recommend organizations assess their requirements and desired features to better understand the implementation and costs involved.

Before choosing IBM NS1 Connect, we evaluated other options, specifically Amazon Route 53 and Cloudflare. We found that since Azure DNS fits naturally into our Azure ecosystem, we wanted better and optimized DNS performance and intelligent traffic steering mechanisms, leading us to choose IBM NS1 Connect based on these two standout requirements.

I rate IBM NS1 Connect as seven out of ten.

I choose seven out of ten for IBM NS1 Connect because it provides many good definitions and capabilities such as strong intelligent traffic steering, monitoring, DNS automation, and global management. These capabilities help reduce downtime, improve application performance, and minimize manual operational work, but I find the advanced filter chain configurations present a learning curve, and troubleshooting and testing could be more intuitive. Pricing is also a concern when compared to alternatives like Amazon Route 53 and Azure DNS. Overall, it is a capable solution for our organization.

Regarding IBM NS1 Connect's governance and security capabilities, I think they are strong. Organizations are very keen to understand how their data is protected and how customer data is not breached in online security protocols, making this a crucial criterion before purchasing. I believe that IBM NS1 Connect has a solid foundation for DNS governance and security, supporting role-based user and API key management and accountability visibility. DNS security protects the integrity of DNS responses, while from a governance perspective, utility teams can manage access according to responsibilities and automate DNS changes through APIs. However, more intuitive audit and rollback capabilities directly in the interface, along with clearer visibility into changes made, are necessary. The overall security capabilities are valuable, but strong access controls, change reviews, and monitoring are still necessary to maintain a secure direction.

For IBM NS1 Connect's accuracy and reliability of output, since we have been using it, I feel it is very reliable in terms of DNS resolution and intelligent traffic steering. Its ability is phenomenal, especially when configured with accurate health checks and performance data. It helps direct users toward suitable endpoints and improve routing decisions. The output is also accurate as monitoring data checks configurations and policies to provide actual output. However, false positives, false signals, or incorrect rules can result in traffic being directed toward unsuitable endpoints, which is why I rate it as a seven. It is beneficial, but there is room for improvement.

My advice to others looking into using IBM NS1 Connect is to first figure out what their requirements are and ensure they have a clear understanding of it. For those particularly interested in optimized versions of intelligent traffic steering and health monitoring checkups, they can proceed with selecting IBM NS1 Connect, but I strongly recommend exploring other options as well.

IBM NS1 Connect serves as our managed authoritative DNS and traffic steering service, which is highly reliable, and its performance is excellent for a global Anycast network.

For a specific example of how I'm using IBM NS1 Connect in my environment, we use it as our public recursive servers. All our internal traffic, when it wants to reach out to the internet, is sent to our NS1 servers, which in turn handles the DDoS and the DNS security layer. It also delivers the global server load balancing services for our enterprise.

Regarding how it fits into my overall infrastructure, IBM NS1 Connect is a key platform that allows our users to resolve public DNS queries.

IBM NS1 Connect integrates with our existing IT infrastructure seamlessly because whatever queries users generate internally within our customer environment are easily sent over DNS ports. It allows DNS over HTTPS, which provides DNS security while sending logs and queries from internal to external servers, evaluating and receiving data over the Anycast network for reliability and low latency.

IBM NS1 Connect has impacted my organization positively by helping us intelligently filter the chain of highly custom real-time routing based on our geographic proximity, with server health and network latency being strong. The real reliability and uptime of the global Anycast service are 100%, which we really appreciate.

We have seen high reliability and uptime and low latency due to Anycast availability, and the redundancy of the server is also highly available across geographic locations.

The best features IBM NS1 Connect offers include GSLB and Geo-steering services, which help to reduce latency, directly impacting revenues. It also has modernized GSLB services, which help to reduce the data center footprint by load balancing the DNS traffic across different data centers.

Geo-steering impacts my operations by helping with real user measurement for NS1 Maps, where it maps a user's geographic location and the local ISP network condition. Then it helps to steer them to the specific CDN edge or the provided data center, offering low latency at the exact millisecond. With the help of GSLB, I use it to route traffic to a distributed data center, minimizing for the high availability and disaster recovery scenarios.

IBM NS1 Connect also offers high uptime Anycast infrastructure, which is very useful.

The level of automation available in IBM NS1 Connect includes automated alerts and support for API REST V2 integration, which can be tuned and utilized as per consumer or customer needs.

IBM NS1 Connect supports disaster recovery and business continuity in our organization through the GSLB feature, which supports multi-data center routing technology. We can host our application wherever our presence is, supporting disaster recovery situations and automated failover scenarios with 99.99% uptime.

IBM NS1 Connect helps with performance monitoring and reporting. I find the analytics and dashboards quite useful in noticing and monitoring the query count and the number of queries being handled per zone.

IBM NS1 Connect has a very steep learning curve in terms of learning the custom filter chains and the complex multi-region setup, which requires a specialized DNS expert and can be difficult for beginners. One has to get trained on IBM NS1 before starting to use it.

The documentation and the interface could be improved, as a step-by-step video configuration guide would be helpful in new implementations. Daily change audit features and easier rollback options should also be provided in the GUI itself.

The dashboard and the GUI have gray areas for advanced tasks, which require API interaction and can be overwhelming for beginners.

We have been using IBM NS1 Connect for the last two years.

IBM NS1 Connect is highly stable.

IBM NS1 Connect handles scaling as our organization grows very well. It is easy to use because when the user queries for an AI app or NS1, real user measurement health signals steer traffic to the data center or cloud instance with low latency and optimal GPU availability. It also performs similar to Netlify, using NS1 with a low TTL capability to propagate DNS updates globally in under five seconds, which is highly commendable.

As a SaaS solution, IBM NS1 Connect is highly scalable, with the DNS server infrastructure behind the Anycast solution being highly scalable.

Customer support for IBM NS1 Connect is good.

We did not use any other solution aside from IBM NS1 Connect.

We can see a return on investment as we need only a few engineers to manage the global scalability and internet domain, conducting web application hosting using NS1.

We did not evaluate any other options before choosing IBM NS1 Connect.

Regarding IBM NS1 Connect's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security are great as it's a SaaS-based solution, and the governance is also good.

While we haven't had a very close connection with IBM NS1 Connect for its AI capability, it does not support any such module. However, whatever is done in the backend to provide DNS services is good.

IBM NS1 Connect is deployed in our organization as we are consuming the service as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.

For this SaaS deployment, we use IBM Cloud, a private cloud.

For those considering using IBM NS1 Connect, I advise being prepared for a complicated web GUI for daily zone management and complex traffic sharing. Sometimes, you need to use API-based integration, which can be overwhelming and may require support from NS1 support, so one has to be very careful about the implementation of basic day-to-day configuration.

I would rate IBM NS1 Connect a nine on a scale of one to ten.