Route53

How DNS Works

⁻ DNS is a global system for translating IP addresses to human-readable domain names.

⁻ When a user tries to access a web address like “example.com”, their web browser or
application performs a DNS Query against a DNS server, supplying the hostname.
⁻ The DNS server takes the hostname and resolves it into a numeric IP address, which the
web browser can connect to.
⁻ A component called a DNS Resolver is responsible for checking if the hostname is
available in local cache, and if not, contacts a series of DNS Name Servers, until eventually
it receives the IP of the service the user is trying to reach, and returns it to the browser or
application. This usually takes less than a second.
Introduction to Route53

- Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web
service
- It is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost effective
way to route end users to Internet applications by translating names like
www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to
connect to each other
- Amazon Route 53 is fully compliant with IPv6 as well
- Amazon Route 53 effectively connects user requests to infrastructure running in AWS as
well as infrastructure outside of AWS
- You can use Route 53 to perform three main functions in any combination: domain
registration, DNS routing, and health checking
1. Register domain names: Your website needs a name, such as example.com. Route 53 lets
you register a name for your website or web application, known as a domain name

2. Route internet traffic to the resources for your domain: When a user opens a web
browser and enters your domain name (example.com) or subdomain name
(acme.example.com) in the address bar, Route 53 helps connect the browser with your
website or web application

3. Check the health of your resources: Route 53 sends automated requests over the
internet to a resource, such as a web server, to verify that it's reachable, available, and
functional. You also can choose to receive notifications when a resource becomes
unavailable and choose to route internet traffic away from unhealthy resources

Benefits

• Highly available and reliable

• Flexible
• Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services
• Simple, Fast, Cost-effective
• Secure & Scalable
• Simplify the hybrid cloud
How Internet Traffic Is Routed to Your Website or Web Application
How Amazon Route 53 Checks the Health of Your Resources

- Amazon Route 53 health checks monitor the health of your resources such as web servers
and email servers. You can optionally configure Amazon Cloudwatch alarms for your health
checks, so that you receive notification when a resource becomes unavailable
Hosted Zones

A hosted zone is a container for records, and records contain information about how you
want to route traffic for a specific domain, such as example.com, and its subdomains
(acme.example.com, zenith.example.com).

There are two types of hosted zones:

- Public hosted zones contain records that specify how you want to route traffic on the
internet
- You get a public hosted zone in one of two ways:
- When you register a domain with Route 53, AWS create a hosted zone for you
automatically.
- When you transfer DNS service for an existing domain to Route 53, you start by
creating a hosted zone for the domain.

- Private hosted zones contain records that specify how you want to route traffic in an
Amazon VPC
- You create a private hosted zone, such as example.com, and specify the VPCs that
you want to associate with the hosted zone.
- You create records in the hosted zone that determine how Route 53 responds to DNS
queries for your domain and subdomains within and among your VPCs. For example,
suppose you have a database server that runs on an EC2 instance in one of the VPCs
that you associated with your private hosted zone
Amazon Route 53 Health Checks

Amazon Route 53 health checks monitor the health and performance of your web
applications, web servers, and other resources. Each health check that you create can
monitor one of the following:

- The health of a specified resource, such as a web server

- The status of other health checks
- The status of an Amazon Cloudwatch alarm

Route 53 Resolver

- A Route53 DNS Resolver is there by default when you create a VPC in AWS
- The default function is to resolve DNS queries within the VPC
- It answers DNS queries for the VPC domain names (for ELBs, EC2instances… etc. within
the VPC)
- For all other Domain names (not within the VPC, such as Public Domain names on the
internet), the Route53 Resolver will do recursive lookups against public DNS resolvers
- Route53 Resolvers are Region specific resources.
Routing Policies

- Simple routing policy – Use for a single resource that performs a given function for your
domain. If you choose the simple routing policy in the Route 53 console, you can specify
multiple values in the same record, such as multiple IP addresses. If you specify multiple
values in a record, Route 53 returns all values to the recursive resolver in random order,
and the resolver returns the values to the client (such as a web browser) that submitted
the DNS query. The client then chooses a value and resubmits the query.

- Failover routing policy – Use when you want to configure active-passive failover. Failover
routing lets you route traffic to a resource when the resource is healthy or to a different
resource when the first resource is unhealthy.

- Geo-location routing policy – Geo-location routing lets you choose the resources that
serve your traffic based on the geographic location of your users, meaning the location
that DNS queries originate from. For example, you might want all queries from Europe to
be routed to an ELB load balancer in the Frankfurt region.

- Latency routing policy – Use when you have resources in multiple AWS Regions and you
want to route traffic to the region that provides the best latency. If your application is
hosted in multiple AWS Regions, you can improve performance for your users by serving
their requests from the AWS Region that provides the lowest latency.
- Multi-value answer routing policy – Use when you want Route 53 to respond to DNS
queries with up to eight healthy records selected at random. Multi-value answer routing
lets you configure Amazon Route 53 to return multiple values, such as IP addresses for
your web servers, in response to DNS queries. Multi-value answer routing also lets you
check the health of each resource, so Route 53 returns only values for healthy resources.

- Weighted routing policy – Weighted routing lets you associate multiple resources with a
single domain name (example.com) or subdomain name (acme.example.com) and choose
how much traffic is routed to each resource
DNS query Types

There are three types of queries in the DNS system:

Recursive Query:
In a recursive query, a DNS client provides a hostname, and the DNS Resolver “must”
provide an answer—it responds with either a relevant resource record, or an error message
if it can't be found.

Iterative Query:
In an iterative query, a DNS client provides a hostname, and the DNS Resolver returns the
best answer it can. If the DNS resolver has the relevant DNS records in its cache, it returns
them. If not, it refers the DNS client to the Root Server, or another Authoritative Name
Server which is nearest to the required DNS zone.

Non-Recursive Query:
A non-recursive query is a query in which the DNS Resolver already knows the answer. It
either immediately returns a DNS record because it already stores it in local cache, or
queries a DNS Name Server which is authoritative for the record, meaning it definitely holds
the correct IP for that hostname.
Types of DNS Servers

The following are the most common DNS server types that are used to resolve hostnames
into IP addresses.

DNS Resolver:
A DNS resolver (recursive resolver), is designed to receive DNS queries, which include a
human-readable hostname such as “www.example.com”, and is responsible for tracking the
IP address for that hostname.

DNS Root Server:

The root server is the first step in the journey from hostname to IP address. The DNS Root
Server extracts the Top Level Domain (TLD) from the user’s query—for
example, www.example.com—and provides details for the .com TLD Name Server. In turn,
that server will provide details for domains with the .com DNS zone, including
“example.com”.

Authoritative DNS Server:

Higher level servers in the DNS hierarchy define which DNS server is the “authoritative”
name server for a specific hostname, meaning that it holds the up-to-date information for
that hostname.
Domain registration, Domain Hosting and Domain transfer

Domain registration:
When you want to get a new domain name, such as the example.com part of the URL
http://example.com, you can register it with Amazon Route 53.
You can also transfer the registration for existing domains from other registrars to Route 53
or transfer the registration for domains that you register with Route 53 to another registrar.

Domain Hosting:
Domain hosting refers to businesses that specialize in hosting domain names for individuals
and companies. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages.

Domain transfer:
A domain transfer refers to the process of changing the designated registrar of a
domain name. ... Domain names may be transferred only if they have been registered with
the previous registrar for 60 days or more .
Global Accelerator
Global Accelerator

- AWS Global Accelerator is a service that improves the availability and performance of
your applications with local or global users
- AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to optimize the path from your
users to your applications, improving the performance of your traffic by as much as 60%
- AWS Global Accelerator continually monitors the health of your application endpoints
and redirects traffic to healthy endpoints in less than 30 seconds

Benefits

- Improve global application availability

- Accelerate your global applications
- Easily manage endpoints
Without AWS Global Accelerator

It can take many networks to reach the application. Paths to and from the application may
differ. Each hop impacts performance and can introduce risks

With AWS Global Accelerator

Adding AWS Global Accelerator removes these inefficiencies. It leverages the Global AWS
Network, resulting in improved performance.
1. Define Route53
2. What are the 3 main functions which Route53 perform
3. What is a Hosted Zone and types of Hosted zones
4. What are the different types of Routing Policies