NS1 offers the only Managed DNS network in mainland China with full support for state-of-the-art DNS traffic management and native synchronization with the advanced features of the NS1 platform. The solution improves DNS response times and application performance for users and clients primarily in mainland China. The network also improves reliability by removing the need for DNS queries originating in China to traverse the “Great Firewall of China,” which can slow down or block DNS queries.
Note
Contact the NS1 Support team or your dedicated CSM to access the NS1 Managed DNS network for China.
There are two primary scenarios for which NS1’s Managed DNS for China network can be used:
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Scenario 1: You have a domain intended for the mainland China market only — as in, a domain that only or primarily receives DNS queries from within mainland China. In this case, you would use the default NS1 Managed DNS for China nameservers for your domain delegation.
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Scenario 2: You have a domain intended for both mainland China and other regions worldwide — that is, a domain that receives DNS queries from both within and outside mainland China. In this case, you would use NS1’s nameserver acceleration for China nameservers.
Similarly to our Dedicated DNS deployments, NS1’s DNS servers in mainland China form an independent DNS network and do not participate in NS1’s globally anycast Managed DNS network. Due to regulatory hurdles, the servers deployed in mainland China are unicasted. This is the case with all major international DNS providers in the region. To help alleviate performance impact, the majority of DNS resolvers in mainland China support SRTT. This results in sub-50ms response times to DNS queries originating in the region. To mitigate the effect of outages in mainland China, one of the IPs customers delegate their domains to will be part of our globally anycast Managed DNS network.
Managed DNS for China comprises 4 POPs located in Shanghai, Beijing, Qingdao, and Shenzhen with connectivity to top-tier service providers such as China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile.
Global companies serving the China market are often forced to deploy a domain specifically for the market—typically a .cn domain for China and a .com or .net for the rest of the world. NS1’s exclusive Nameserver Acceleration for China solution obviates the need for global enterprises to deploy a separate domain for their China-based users.
Nameserver Acceleration is a technology that allows end-users to leverage multiple independent DNS networks simultaneously, intelligently routing users to the most performant network based on their location and ISP. By leveraging NS1’s Managed DNS network in mainland China, DNS queries from users in the region will be served by NS1’s mainland China network while users outside of the ‘great firewall’ will reach our Managed global network dynamically, all on the same ‘global’ domain (.com for example). This means the performance of any domain can be significantly accelerated for users in China without impacting performance negatively for users outside the region.
To configure a domain to utilize nameserver acceleration for China, the zone must be enabled on both NS1's Managed DNS network and the mainland China DNS network. This can be configured within the NS1 portal on the Zone Settings page within the relevant zone. The registrar for the domain will then need to be updated to reflect a new set of nameservers. Your customer success representative will supply these nameservers once your account has enabled nameserver acceleration.
Follow the instructions below to publish your zones to one of NS1’s China DNS networks. Instructions vary depending on the applicable scenario described under “Use cases” above.
Contact the NS1 Support team or your dedicated CSM to add NS1’s Managed DNS for China network to your account.
Follow the instructions below to publish an existing DNS zone to the NS1 Managed DNS for China network. Note that you can also do this during zone creation.
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Log into the NS1 portal and navigate to DNS > Zones.
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Locate one of the DNS zones you wish to publish to the China DNS network. Double-click the zone name to drill into zone details, then click the Zone Settings tab.
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Under Networks, select the checkbox next to China, ensuring the NS1 Managed (network) option is also selected.
Warning
Do not deselect the NS1 Managed DNS network option. We strongly recommend that you also publish the zone to the default NS1 Managed DNS networks and the China network. Publishing your zones only to the China network will cause some queries to fail and increases the risk of failure in the event of an outage. Also, zone transfers are only supported if the zone is published to both networks.
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Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save changes.
Warning
Once saved, the nameservers under the Nameservers tab for this zone will update automatically. For now, ignore the nameservers on this page and follow the steps below to identify the correct ones to use.
The instructions for updating the NS (nameserver) record for each China-enabled zone vary depending on the relevant scenario (described under “Use cases” above). Follow the instructions below relevant to your particular use case.
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Within the zone, locate the NS record and click the record name to drill into record details.
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Remove only the following four answers representing Managed DNS nameservers (dns[1-4].nsone.p0X.net):
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dns1.nsone.p0X.net
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dns2.nsone.p0X.net
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dns3.nsone.p0X.net
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dns4.nsone.p0X.net
Warning
Do not delete the Managed DNS for China nameservers (dns[1-5].c01.nsone.net.cn).
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At the registrar, update the delegation for this domain to add the five Managed DNS for China nameservers:
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dns1.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns2.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns3.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns4.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns5.c01.nsone.net.cn
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Within the zone, locate the NS record and click the record name to drill into record details.
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Remove all nine of the following answers representing auto-assigned nameservers for Managed DNS and Managed DNS for China networks:
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dns1.nsone.p0X.net
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dns2.nsone.p0X.net
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dns3.nsone.p0X.net
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dns4.nsone.p0X.net
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dns1.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns2.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns3.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns4.c01.nsone.net.cn
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dns5.c01.nsone.net.cn
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Next, add an answer for each of the nameserver acceleration endpoints as shown below. The specific nameserver set you add depends on whether your domain is a .net, .org, or something else.
For domains ending in .net or .com, add each of the following hostnames representing the relevant nameservers for nameserver acceleration:
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dns1.g01.ns1global.org
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dns2.g01.ns1global.org
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dns3.g01.ns1global.org
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dns4.g01.ns1global.org
For all other domains, add each of the following hostnames:
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dns1.g01.ns1global.com
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dns2.g01.ns1global.com
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dns3.g01.ns1global.com
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dns4.g01.ns1global.com
Note
Once complete, there should be four nameservers listed within the NS record.
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At the registrar, update the domain delegation to use the four nameservers you just added to the NS record.
Note
In the past, NS1 also provided dns[1-4].g01.ns1global.net as nameservers for nameserver acceleration. NS1 still supports this, but we recommend using the .org or .com delegation shown above.