Route53 DNS Resolution Latency

A customer is currently using Akamai CDN and are evaluating Route53 for their DNS needs.

If the customer is using Akamai, they need to create a CNAME which points from their Route 53 hosted zone to a domain on Akamai CDN's DNS. The CNAME itself on Route 53 should likely be given a high TTL (like 30-60 mins). The target of that CNAME has a TTL more like 20-60 seconds. This means the long pole for DNS resolution is likely going to be the Akamai CDN DNS most of the time anyway.

Route 53 directly integrates with CloudFront DNS using "ALIAS" records which avoids the extra dns resolution cost of that CNAME. That might be worth a look if DNS query latency is very critical to them.

They want to make sure that DNS resolution is fast from everywhere in the worlds, especially Australia and Japan. I would like to provide them with some concrete, quantitative answers about DNS resolution in Route53. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

Based on this third party's measurements, Route 53 is generally very competitive:

• https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-providers,Asia,resolver_simulation
• https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-providers,Oceania,resolver_simulation

I'm linking to the "resolver simulation" data (what "real life" resolver performance looks like) as opposed to "raw" (average direct round trip time to each nameserver).

In order to provide highest possible availability, Route 53 aims to ensure that from any point in the world, there are always four distinct paths to Route 53's nameservers for any hosted zone. So, if you're in Australia, your four nameservers will be spread across Sydney, Perth and Melbourne. Resolvers tend to be smart about either prefetching or choosing the shorter RTT nameservers, so "resolver simulation" is probably a better reflection of reality than "raw".

• https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-providers,Asia
• https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-providers,Oceania