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DNS Proxy
Optional Services
DNS Proxy
Conceptually, DNS Proxy is a function to dynamically assign DNS server to users behind FortiWAN according to WAN
link loading. It is implemented by redirecting outgoing DNS requests to specified DNS server. No matter what the
external DNS server a host is using, for any outgoing DNS request passing through FortiWAN, DNS Proxy replaces the
original destination IP of the request with IP of another DNS server specified on each WAN link.
Actually, DNS Proxy is mainly used to resolve the traffic congestion on single WAN link due to the usage of Optimum
Route for resolving ISP peering issue. As the description in
, Optimum Route does resolve
the inefficient transmission resulted from bad peering between ISPs, but the traffic can be further distributed over
multiple WAN link if Optimum Route cooperates with DNS Proxy. No matter which detection mode of Optimum Route
is used, traffic to a specified server will almost fix on one WAN link (which the server is located in the ISP subnet) if this
ISP has peering issue between other ISPs (other WAN links). Actually, most service providers or internet content
providers will not deploy their servers in only one ISP network if peering issue exists. They usually deploy servers in
several ISP networks, and maintain DNS servers (or appropriate settings on ISP's DNS) for common domain in each of
the ISP network. Those DNS servers in different ISP networks answer the IP address of their application servers that
are located in the same ISP network. Asking different ISP's DNS for the same domain name gains different IP
addresses, which belong to different ISP networks.
As the example above, the DNS 1 in ISP-1 network answers 10.10.10.10.100 to query for domain www.abc.com, while
the DNS 2 in ISP-2 network answers 20.20.20.20 to the query for the same domain. In other words, traffic to
www.abc.com will be routed to WAN 1 by Optimum Route if a client asks DNS 1 for www.abc.com, and traffic will be
routed to WAN 2 if the client asks DNS 2 for the same domain. However, the clients in LAN are configured with a static
DNS address no matter manually or by DHCP. If all the clients in LAN are configured with
DNS Server =
10.10.10.100
, all the traffic to www.abc.com will fixedly be destined to 10.10.10.10 through WAN 1. This is what
we mentioned traffic congestion on single WAN link resulted from the usage of Optimum Route for resolving ISP
peering issue. For this reason, FortiWAN's DNS Proxy is used to automatically redirect a DNS query to different DNS
servers located in different ISP networks according WAN link loading (load balancing algorithms), no matter what the
FortiWAN Handbook
Fortinet Technologies Inc.
241