The ‘Global DNS Traffic Report,’ which offers insights based on examination of client traffic trends, was released by NS1, a global supplier of application traffic solutions. An important result was that public resolvers accounted for almost 60% of recursive DNS utilization on the internet, with telco companies comprising almost 9%.
Over the course of a 90-day span in late 2022, the NS1 team analyzed more than 7.5 trillion DNS requests and 15.1 trillion packets using its DNS Insights solution, which is driven by the free and open source network observability utility Orb. Geographically, 42% of the traffic originated from North America and 26% from Europe, with the rest from Asia and other foreign places.
“NS1 resolves a sizeable portion of the internet’s total traffic as one of the biggest authoritative DNS providers on the planet, giving our team a unique vantage point for assessing the health of networks and the technologies involved in delivering global Internet traffic,” said Richard Boucher, technical product manager at NS1. “There is a lot to learn about how we use online apps and which technologies transport internet traffic when one considers the sizeable quantity of data passing through NS1’s computers.”
Who Is Actually in Charge of the Internet?
NS1’s analysis revealed the following about traffic market share:
- With a little over 30%, Google is by far the leader. This includes traffic from Google Cloud Platform, which is second at 16%, and 8.8.8.8 (obviously the most common public server).
- Because AWS doesn’t operate a public server, unlike Google, this is a more accurate depiction of businesses that are using the cloud to manage their DNS.
- Third on the list is Cloudflare (9.3%), followed by Akamai (5%) and Cisco's OpenDNS (4.4%).
- The ranking places few telecom behemoths at the top, with T-Mobile (4%), AT&T (2.5%), and Comcast (2.1%) completing the group. T-Mobile’s dominant place in comparison to the other telecom firms is probably due to its extensive worldwide presence as well as its role as the backbone for a reasonable amount of exchange traffic.
Additional Findings Regarding Network Innovation and Health
- The EDNS Client Subnet (ECS), a DNS enhancement intended to improve speed, is becoming less popular, which points to the standardization of privacy-focused DNS over HTTPS. The ECS module was only used in 26% of the questions answered during the 90-day timeframe.
- Despite obvious advantages and more sophisticated features over IPv4, IPv6 uptake is still slow. According to NS1's study, only about 30% of the time is spent using the IPv6 network layer.
- The adoption of DNSSEC, which shields businesses from man-in-the-middle assaults like cache poisoning, is still low; only 14% of requests reaching NS1’s servers use DNSSEC signatures. Google's server services received only 5% of requests for zones with DNSSEC enabled.
- The new HTTPS entries, developed as a response to the "CNAME-at-apex" challenge, now make up almost 10% of DNS requests to NS1 just a few months after being approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force. This increase is partially due to widespread browser usage and assistance from reputable DNS service companies like NS1.
