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Networking Advanced

What is Anycast?

A network routing technique where the same IP address is announced from multiple locations, directing users to the nearest server.

Anycast assigns a single IP address to multiple servers in different geographic locations. Network routing protocols (BGP) automatically direct each user's traffic to the nearest server instance. This provides automatic load distribution, DDoS mitigation (attack traffic is absorbed across all locations), and low latency (users connect to the closest node). CDN providers, DNS services (Cloudflare, Google Public DNS), and cloud providers use anycast extensively. If one anycast node fails, traffic automatically routes to the next nearest node, providing built-in fault tolerance without client-side changes.

Related Terms

VLAN (Virtual LAN)
A logical grouping of network devices that creates separate broadcast domains on the same physical network infrastructure.
SDN (Software-Defined Networking)
An approach that separates the network control plane from the data plane, enabling centralized, programmable network management.
HTTP Keep-Alive
An HTTP mechanism that reuses a single TCP connection for multiple requests, reducing the overhead of establishing new connections.
Traceroute
A network diagnostic tool that shows the path packets take from source to destination, listing each hop along the way.
DNS over HTTPS (DoH)
A protocol that encrypts DNS queries by sending them over HTTPS, preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS traffic.
ARP (Address Resolution Protocol)
A protocol that maps IP addresses to physical MAC addresses on a local network segment.
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