DNS, DHCP & IP Address Management appliances
For Microsoft DNS & DHCP servers
For open source DNS & DHCP servers
Manage multi-vendor cloud DNS servers centrally
RIR Declaration Management and Automation
Automated network device configuration and management
Centralized visibility over all your clouds
A single source of truth for your network automation
Why DDI is an Obvious Starting Point
DNS Threat Intelligence for proactive defense
Adaptive DNS security for service continuity and data protection
Improve Application Access Control to prevent spread of attacks
Protect users and block DNS-based malware activity
Carrier-grade DNS DDoS attack protection
Optimize application delivery performance from the edge
for Proactive Network Security
Visibility, analytics and micro segmentation for effective Zero Trust strategy
Enable work from anywhere by controlling access, security and data privacy
Simplify management and control costs across AWS, Azure and GCP environments
Risk-free migration to reduce DDI complexity and cost
Move risk-free to improve performance, security and costs
Automate management, unify control and strengthen security of connected devices
Protect your network against all DNS attacks, data exfiltration and ransomware
Enable zero touch operations for network management and security
Improve resiliency, deployment velocity and user experience for SD-WAN projects
Integrated DNS, DHCP, IPAM services to simplify, automate and secure your network.
Simplify design, deployment and mgmt of critical DDI services for telcos
Simplify and automate management of critical DDI services for finance
Simplify and automate management of critical DDI services for higher education
Simplify and automate management of critical DDI services for retail
Open architecture for DDI integration
Technology partnerships for network security & management ecosystems
Extend security perimeters and strengthen network defenses
Submit requests for temporary licenses
Submit access requests for EfficientIP knowledge platforms
Submit membership requests for EfficientIP Community
Strengthen Your Network Protection with Smart DNS Security
Customer-centric DDI project delivery and training
Acquire the skills needed to manage EfficientIP SOLIDserver™
Identify vulnerabilities with an assessment of your DNS traffic
Test your protection against data breaches via DNS
Dedicated representation for your organization inside EfficientIP
Explore content which helps manage and automate your network and cloud operations
Read content which strengthens protection of your network, apps, users and data
Learn how to enhance your app delivery performance to improve resilience and UX
Why Using DNS Allow Lists is a No-Brainer
Who we are and what we do
Meet the team of leaders guiding our global growth
Technology partnerships for network security and management ecosystems
Discover the benefits of the SmartPartner global channel program
Become a part of the innovation
The latest updates, release information, and global events
The Domain Name System (DNS) is designed to provide translations, converting hostnames to IP addresses (name resolution) or IP addresses to hostnames (reverse lookup). It also designates the DNS servers (or DNS appliances) which hold the reference DNS information, as well as the DNS protocol used for communication (queries, data transfer…).
DNS brings efficiency to the process of resolving the names of internet sites with their underlying technical addresses, the IP addresses. Hosts across networks are locatable via their IP address. To connect to these hosts, users make use of “friendly names” such as www.efficientip.com. DNS provides a standard naming structure for locating IP-based resources.
The DNS servers themselves are often referred to as name servers, their main role being to respond to queries from clients or from other name servers. Name servers therefore need to hold the DNS database information for their portion of the namespace, known as a zone. The resolution process executed by a name server can be either recursive or iterative. When processing recursive queries, the name server builds up information about each domain space which can be temporarily stored in the DNS cache. This speeds up processing time for subsequent queries, based on the time-to-live (TTL) specified for cache data.
Name servers can be different types: 1) Authoritative 2) Caching-only 3) Forwarder. Authoritative DNS servers locally store information about a zone and are fully responsible for the first level content of this zone. Caching-only DNS servers obtain information from authoritative servers and store query answers in cache for later use. Forwarders are designated servers to which a particular subset of queries requiring external resolution are sent.
When it comes to managing a DNS zone, name servers are defined as either master or slave. The slave’s main role is to ensure redundancy and spread the load from the clients and other DNS servers. The master zone holds the original copy (the master record) of the database, while the slave zone holds a copy of it. Zones on the master server are provisioned by the network administrator ideally through an IPAM solution, whereas zones on the slave are automatically populated via zone transfer. The three types of zones used are recursive lookup zone, forward lookup zone and conditional forwarder zone. Data stored in the zone files are in the form of Resource Records (RR), with example RR types including A, AAAA, CNAME, MX and SOA.
DNS is “open by design”, created over 30 years ago with limited focus put on DNS security aspects. It is therefore often targeted by hackers, so requires purpose-built security to mitigate DNS attacks such as DDoS, DNS cache poisoning, Phishing, zero-day attacks and data exfiltration. These can affect both public DNS servers and private DNS servers, and can only be effectively thwarted using DNS analytics and threat intelligence based on internal DNS traffic and external data feeds.
