Liquid Telecom aims for fastest Internet speeds with new system

Kenyan Internet service providers and users now have a local alternative public Domain Name System that promises a near 100 per cent server uptime and a much faster browsing speed.

British company Liquid Telecom has introduced the new Anycast DNS in Africa, with its 11 servers set up in Kenya (ON Mombasa Road and in Mombasa town), South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda and the UK. The firm has migrated all its customers to the new DNS.

Anycast DNS allows Internet users to access multiple servers simultaneously, automatically switching them to the closest functional server without interrupting their usage.

The migration seeks to solve downtime problems for Internet users whose website searches take un-usually long or do not open at all.

“With Anycast DNS, packets keep flowing. We can upgrade or take a server offline for maintenance without any effect. The client never notices the outage on the recursive server, all he knows is that his servers are working perfectly and the customers are happy,” said the Liquid Telecom group Head of IP Strategy Andrew Alston.

Speaking at the third Africa Domain Name System Forum in Nairobi this week, Mr Alston said the launch will significantly change Internet access speeds and stability in Africa.

DNS protocol serves as the Internet’s phone book so that every time you try a website search, your computer performs a DNS lookup to locate the address of the website you are searching for. Complex pages often require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading, so your computer may be performing hundreds of lookups a day so the search takes longest depending on how far the specific address is located.

With the Anycast Servers, addresses can now be located faster since the servers are interlinked and incorporate all addresses regardless of their locations.

Internet Service Providers make connections to the Internet possible using their DNS on just one server, sometimes with a single backup unit, using the Unicast DNS platform to convert the website name that users write into their browser into the right number to access that website’s files — which can be on a server anywhere in the world.

This means the further the website files are, the longer users wait to access them.

The single servers at times break down causing a total Internet down time. A search request may not succeed if the server cannot locate a complex address or may be queued, causing the annoying wait.

Anycast servers seeks to resolve this because any server can pick up the search as long as the DNS settings are configured correctly.

Liquid Telcom now joins Internet companies like Google, Open DNS, Ultra DNS, and DNS Advantage who have a public DNS service that aims at making Internet access robust and fast.

The company will be first in Africa to provide a public DNS using the Anycast servers. MTN, Mweb, iWayAfrica already provide the service through “Unicast” servers.

Liquid Telecom Kenya CEO Ben Roberts said the new technology with nodes across the continent will be a huge milestone for Internet access in Africa.

“We have made it very simple with very simple DNS settings meaning Internet users in Africa can now enjoy similarly reliable services as those provided by Google. Because we are setting up in Africa, this will be the closest Anycast servers the Internet users here can rely on,” Mr Roberts told the Business Daily.

Liquid Telecom’s public DNS is available on the addresses 5.11.11.5 and 5.11.11.11 and works best when ISPs are peered with Liquid Telecom.

In the event of a natural disaster, power outage, sabotage or data fraud, servers using the Unicast DNS experience downtime that is noticeable for Internet users. But Anycast DNS allows for a completely seamless switchover, so servers can even be serviced without interruptions to business operations or service.

The new Anycast DNS for Liquid Telecom is primarily for its customers, but the company has also made it publicly available, offering an alternative to Google’s public DNS.

According to one independent reviewer testing the two services in Zimbabwe, Liquid Telecom’s public DNS was six times faster than Google’s, taking 20 milliseconds, compared to 180 milliseconds to reach the Google DNS service.

“The cost of Internet downtime is becoming greater as economies move online. There is the risk of missing out on new customers and by effect revenue, increased financial expenditure on support alternatives during downtime, unhappy customers, loss of customers to competition, and, in some instances, legal penalties,” said Mr Alston.

The rollout of Anycast DNS comes as part of Liquid Telecom’s investment in Internet infrastructure across Africa, with a presence in 11 African countries and a fibre network spanning over 18,000km across the continent’s fastest growing economies – Kenya, Botswana, DRC, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Mauritius, Rwanda and Lesotho.Plans are under way for Liquid Telecom to additionally roll out Anycast DNS in Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi.

The International Telecommunications Union says Africa’s Internet penetration has been growing rapidly with one in every five people using Internet today.

Kenya has more than 26 million people accessing the internet, with a majority increasingly using their mobile phones to go online.

@Edwincowino, [email protected]