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EntityQ613897· pop 24· linked from 54 articles

Anycast is a network addressing and routing methodology in which a single IP address is shared by devices (generally servers) in multiple locations. Routers direct packets addressed to this destination to the location nearest the sender, using their normal decision-making algorithms, typically the lowest number of BGP network hops. Anycast routing is widely used by content delivery networks such as web and name servers, to bring their content closer to end users.

Key facts

Networking protocol.title
Anycast
Networking protocol.image
Anycast2.svg
Networking protocol.image size
200px
Networking protocol.caption
Visualization of anycast routing
Networking protocol.rfcs
...
Networking protocol.developer
Craig Partridge, Trevor Mendez, Walter Milliken at BBN
Networking protocol.purpose
To route traffic to the closest server

via Wikipedia infobox

~10 min read

Article

16 sections
Contents
  • History
  • Early objections
  • Internet Protocol version 4
  • Internet Protocol version 6
  • Applications
  • Domain Name System
  • IPv6 transition
  • Content delivery networks
  • Connectivity between Anycast and Multicast network
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Mitigation of denial-of-service attacks
  • Local and global nodes
  • See also
  • References
  • External links

Anycast is a network addressing and routing methodology in which a single IP address is shared by devices (generally servers) in multiple locations. Routers direct packets addressed to this destination to the location nearest the sender, using their normal decision-making algorithms, typically the lowest number of BGP network hops. Anycast routing is widely used by content delivery networks such as web and name servers, to bring their content closer to end users.

==History== The first documented use of anycast routing for topological load-balancing of Internet-connected services was in 1989; the technique was first formally documented in the IETF four years later. It was first applied to critical infrastructure in 2001 with the anycasting of the I-root nameserver.

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