Best DNS Germany

With the internet so entrenched in our lives—across all aspects—having ultra-fast, and exceptionally reliable DNS is paramount. In this blog, we’ll cover internet behavior and business statistics for Germany, as well as the best DNS options for the country in 2022 and beyond. 

Germany Online Trends and Behavior

According to Statista, Germany has approximately 67 million internet users (out of a total population of 83 million) and an average daily usage time of 196 minutes. Germany’s GDP was just shy of 4 trillion in 2020, of which 83.1 billion was generated from e-commerce. That’s a 122% increase over the span of a decade. This number is forecasted to grow by as much as 11.96% by 2025.  

Domains servicing Germany must be prepared for high internet demands.

What is a DNS Server?

The domain name system (DNS) operates via nameservers positioned all around the world. There are several different DNS servers: root, top level domain (TLD), recursive, and authoritative—and each of these types of servers needs each other to do their job. Often compared to a phonebook, DNS is how devices are able to communicate with each other, as DNS is how domain names like “constellix.com” are converted to numerical IP addresses that machines can read, such as “192.0.2.0” for example. These servers work tirelessly in the background and unless functionally incorrectly, most people don’t even know they exist. 

But you know better.

As a domain owner, you understand how vital DNS is to your organization and to your customers. Especially authoritative DNS, as without it, no one could find your domain on the web. The authoritative nameserver is what holds the most up-to-date information on your domain. And, if running on a strong infrastructure, it can reduce page load times and boost your SEO in addition to doing its main function—answering user queries. 

Tip: To learn more about DNS and the different server types, read our blog on Authoritative vs. Recursive DNS.

Top 15 Visited Websites in Germany

According to Semush, the following are the top 15 visited websites in Germany:

1. Google.com (google)
2. Adition.com (DNSimple)
3. Youtube.com (google)
4. Facebook.com (internal)
5. Amazon.de (Dyn/Ultra
6. Flashtalking.com (Dyn)
7. Wikipedia.org (internal)
8. Google.de (google)
9. Adup-tech.com (AWS)
10. Bild.de (netuse.de and Akamai)
11. Ebay.de (NS1 and ebayDNS)
12. Uimserv.net (1and1.ui.dns)
13. Googlesyndication.com (google)
14. Instagram.com (internal)
15. T-online.de (dns50 and pns??)
16. Ebay-kleinanzeigen.de
17. Dhl.de (akamai)
18. Doubleclick.net (google)
19.  2mdn.net (google)
20.  Xhamster.com (cloudflare)
    

Best DNS Server in Germany: Give Your Website or Application a Performance Boost

The truth is, all online activity begins with a DNS lookup. Because of this, your online strategy should also start with DNS. After all, it’s your domain’s foundation and the way consumers find your content. 

But there’s a lot more to DNS than just lookups.

A strong DNS partner affords you the ability to fully optimize and control your web traffic. Properly configured, your content can be geo-load balanced and delivered based on user location, capacity, and performance. 

The fact is, not all DNS providers are “created equal.”

When considering a provider, never overlook infrastructure and scalability. Fancifully-titled products and services won’t make up for a provider’s lack of infrastructure, as that is the backbone of the service they are providing.

A unique fact about Constellix (and sister company DNS Made Easy) is that it runs on parent company Tiggee LLC’s extensive network of bare-metal servers. These nameservers are strategically placed in major data centers across the globe—as close to the edge as you can get. a. With more than 540 Gpbs of peering capacity, 100-plus monitoring nodes, and 23 points of presence (PoPs) and counting, we’re able to provide our customers with the fastest and most stable DNS in Germany. 

We are also truly 100% reliable—our network hasn’t experienced an outage for more than 12 years—no other provider can make that claim. Unlike other providers, we are also one of the few in the industry that focuses on DNS. This allows us to continually invest in our infrastructure and product development that provides true, unrivaled value to our users. When partnered with Constellix, you will see noticeable gains in speed and performance.

With direct points of presence (PoPs) in Frankfurt, our customers in Germany, as well as customers operating domains servicing the country, experience superior speeds compared to other providers–on top of our flawless uptime history. Neighboring PoPs in the UK and France, as well as our upcoming PoP in Sweden, also help ensure top performance in Europe as a whole. 

Fastest DNS: Why Is It Important?

It may not seem like a big deal, but when it comes to the web, every millisecond counts—and DNS is where it all begins. You do everything you can to reduce latency and page load times, so you certainly don’t want to ruin all that hard work and money investment with slow and unreliable DNS!  A mere one-second delay can result in a 7% reduction in conversions and a 16% drop in customer satisfaction (Daily Egg).  And according to Unbounce, 70% of customers are less or unwilling to buy from a slow website.

Why take that chance?

DNS Speed Comparison: Global

While the global speed of a provider is important, it’s even more so in the region(s) your actual users are located.  yo If your organization serves Germany exclusively or the majority of your traffic comes from Germany and surrounding areas, you need to analyze speeds by country or region. Even if a provider is the fastest globally overall, doesn’t mean they are the fastest where it would make the most impact for your business. 

As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, so let’s take a look at some real-world data using PerfOps.

In this graph, we have compared 15 of the most popular DNS providers by global speeds:

Provider Speeds

Cloudflare 10.37 ms

Constellix 20.04 ms

DNS Made Easy 20.11 ms

UltraDNS 24.31 ms

NS1 24.45 ms

DNSimple 28.65 ms

Route 53/AWS 31.73 ms

Cloudfloor 34.07 ms

GoDaddy 37.51 ms

Azure 37.52 ms

Dyn 37.74 ms

EasyDNS 46.92 ms

ClouDNS 47.5 ms

Google Cloud 49.61 ms

Akamai 74.62 ms

If you’re reading this, then you either exclusively do business in Germany or a substantial amount of your customers live in the country. The data above shows the averaged provider speeds for the entire world.   But the world is a big place, and many businesses serve specific areas and/or niche audiences. That’s where refining data per country or even city can be especially useful.

DNS Performance in Germany

In this example, we’ll compare the same providers as above, but for Germany only. This will give you a better idea of which DNS provider is best for this area.

As you can see, there are some significant differences between a global comparison and location-specific comparisons.

Provider Speeds

Constellix 3.35 ms

DNS Made Easy 3.41 ms

GoDaddy 3.59 ms

Cloudflare 5.91 ms

NS1 6.25 ms

Dyn 6.51 ms

DNSimple 8.67 ms

Route 53/AWS 9.5 ms

ClouDNS 13.12 ms

UltraDNS 16.52 ms

Google Cloud 18.38 ms

Cloudfloor 20.39 ms

Azure 22.62 ms

EasyDNS 24.69 ms

Akamai 43.4 ms

You can also compare by multiple countries depending on where you’re users are at to get the best picture of DNS performance. 

DNS on a City Level: Frankfurt

Let’s take a look at one more example. Using the same group of providers, we’ll look at DNS performance on a city level: Frankfurt, Germany.

In Frankfurt, Constellix and DNS Made Easy perform highest, at 2.7 / 2.75. Our speeds are exceptional in Frankfurt and Germany due to our PoP being directly in the Frankfurt database, as close to the edge as possible.

Tip: Speed data in the above examples were gathered from PerfOps, and represents speeds for each provider within the last 30 days of this writing. Speeds can and do fluctuate, so it’s best practice to check your DNS provider’s performance regularly. 

A Historical Timeline of Provider Outages

Of course, speed isn’t the only factor to consider. A provider’s uptime history should be a major influential decision when choosing who will handle your DNS. Below is a list of just a few of the notable regional and global outages within the last decade.

• Cloudflare  June 2021, Aug 2020, Jul 2020, Apr 2020, Jul 2019
• Constellix - NONE (over 8 years of 100% uptime)
• DNS Made Easy - NONE (over 12 years of 100% uptime)
• Neustar UltraDNS - May 2021, Oct 2015, Apr 2014, Jan 2013
• NS1  - 2021, 2016
• Network Solutions - Mar 2021, May 2021
• Route 53/AWS - Nov 2021, Sept 2021, Nov 2020, Oct 2019, May 2019, Apr 2019, Mar 2017 
• Dyn  - Mar 2021, Oct 2016
• GoDaddy  - Nov 2020, Mar 2017, Sept 2012, 
• Azure    -    Oct 2021, Mar 2021 (2), Mar 2019
• Google Cloud - Jun 2021, Dec 2020, Nov 2020, Aug 2020, Nov 2019 
• Akamai    -      Jul 2021, Jun 2021
• Fastly   -     Jun 2021

Constellix DNS Solutions for Germany 

We’ve discussed the importance of infrastructure, speed, and uptime. Now, let’s take a look at our top recommendations for DNS solutions that every business in Germany should have. While core DNS functionality is common across providers, each one has its own technology and services. Constellix offers some of the most advanced, customizable services in the industry.  

1. Primary/Primary

Even though we have a true outage-free history, we recommend DNS redundancy to all of our customers. Not only is having redundant providers best practice, it’s also the best protection from provider-related downtime. With two DNS providers, if one goes down, your domain will remain accessible as your queries will automatically be answered by your second provider. While it serves the same purpose as 

 Constellix supports Primary/Primary DNS, which serves the same purpose as traditional secondary, but is done through API calls. 

H3 2. Failover

With Failover, you can protect your domain from outages due to unhealthy resources or unexpected issues on your own servers or networks. This redundant solution has been used successfully for decades and is an effective and cost-efficient solution. Constellix monitors your resources via our state-of-the-art Sonar Performance monitoring app. Traffic is automatically rerouted to your backup resource if your primary IP/host is down. We also ensure your backup resource is available before diverting all traffic there—many other providers do not.

3. Internet Traffic Optimization (ITO)

ITO allows you to Intelligently balance your DNS traffic load based on the fastest and most geographically accurate resource.

4. GeoIP Filters

GeoIP filtering allows you to set business rules in front of your DNS records. These rules help make traffic decisions that are beneficial for your ROI. You can also optimize traffic by user location or block traffic from a particular area, ASN, or even IP from accessing your domain entirely. Our GeoIP filters essentially let you create your own custom web application firewall (WAF).

5. Advanced DNS Analytics

With advanced DNS analytics, you can analyze DNS query activity in real time or over a set period of time. This gives you insight into where your traffic is coming from. It also helps IT teams spot misconfigurations, malicious traffic, and more. 

6. Real-time Traffic Anomaly Detection (RTTAD)

With the escalation of DDoS and other cyber attacks, a traffic monitoring solution is crucial for your domain. Our RTTAD solution uses AI and machine learning to learn your domain’s unique traffic patterns. When RTTAD detects suspicious activity or anything out of the ordinary, your team will receive an instant notification. This lets you stop attacks before they can cause damage to your domain, or fix errors that may be causing query surges.

The Best DNS for Germany: Top Speeds, Uptime, and Advanced Solutions

Germany’s e-commerce and online activity are expected to continue to grow rapidly. It’s vital that your organization chooses the best DNS solutions possible. Speed and performance in Germany, as well as any other region you frequently do business in, should be a major factor to consider when choosing a DNS provider. Uptime history is also critical. Once you narrow down the best performing DNS provider(s) for your area, you want to focus on provider scalability, as well as the available products and services. 

DNS is the backbone of the internet and one of the most important decisions you’ll make for your domain. Any competitive edge will help your business maximize ROI and provide your customers with the best experience possible.  

Related Resources:

What is DNS Vendor Lock-in and Why You Should Avoid It

Authoritative and Recursive DNS: What’s the Difference?

Choosing a DNS Hosting Provider: Best Practices