NS1 Connect is the unified platform for managing your DNS resources, traffic steering configurations, and more across all of your NS1 DNS networks. Built with an API-first architecture, the platform is designed to accommodate even the most complex infrastructures, technical requirements, or business needs. The NS1 portal makes it just as easy for non-programmatic users to construct and optimize DNS configurations while also providing insightful data and visual reports to help you identify anomalies, inform infrastructural decisions, and fine-tune traffic steering policies.
There are five key components to the NS1 Connect platform:
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Resource management
DNS zones, records, and answers are the foundation of your network as they contain critical information your audiences (as in, people or clients requesting information about your domains) can access your websites or applications. Resource management refers to the creating and configuration of these resources on the NS1 platform.
Related tasks include: Creating a zone or importing a zone file, Adding a record to a zone, Enabling DNSSEC, Enabling outgoing zone transfers
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Traffic steering
The NS1 platform delivers next-generation traffic steering technology you can use to distribute DNS traffic intelligently across your network. The NS1 Filter Chain™ allows you to construct a custom policy selecting a variety of traffic steering filters—each applying a unique processing method to determine the best possible endpoint to direct each individual request. Organizations with more complex global networks or more challenging requirements may leverage NS1's advanced traffic steering filters which use real user monitoring (RUM) data to inform traffic steering decisions in real time.
Related tasks include: Configuring a Filter Chain, Configuring automatic failover, Configuring automatic load shedding, and using RUM-based traffic steering filters.
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Monitoring
The most common traffic steering rules include avoiding unavailable, overloaded, or under-performing endpoints. NS1 offers a set of basic monitors you can use to track its up/down status of an endpoint. Alternatively, you can use one of the supporting monitoring service integrations to pull data collected by third-party monitors to the NS1 platform to inform traffic steering. If included in your NS1 account, you can configure RUM-based (Pulsar) applications and jobs to pull real-time availability and performance metrics from shared or private data sources back to the NS1 platform to optimize load balancing across complex, global networks.
Related tasks include: Creating an NS1 monitor (DNS, HTTP/S, PING (ICMP), or TCP), Configuring a third-party data source, Configuring monitoring alerts, Attaching a data feed to a DNS answer
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Observability
All NS1 customers have access to basic DNS reports like queries per second (QPS) and global traffic distribution. You can use these reports to detect sudden drops or upticks in DNS traffic, compare domains across networks, and more. If available on your account, NS1 DNS Insights™ uses lightweight, actionable data feeds to provide a granular view of performance, trends, and anomalies—giving you the insight necessary to improve system performance and security while reducing operational costs. Finally, those leveraging NS1’s RUM (Pulsar) traffic steering solution can access a variety of data sets and reports containing real-time performance and availability data collected from active application users.
Related tasks include: Viewing zone activity, Scheduling reports, Viewing the DNS Insights dashboard, Pulsar Dashboard
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Account management
Beyond DNS management, account administrators can manage users, teams, and API keys to ensure appropriate access levels based on the user role or function of the API key. They can also view and modify billing-related settings, account activity, security settings, and all other tasks related to managing your NS1 account.
Related tasks include: Locating your account ID, Managing account users, Managing API keys, Managing teams, Setting up overage alerts, Updating your payment method, Viewing account activity log, Enabling two-factor authentication
Refer to the subsequent articles in this section to learn more about each platform component.