Real-time DNS Analytics: Product Spotlight

While they say content is king (and I couldn’t agree more, obviously), one could argue that the real head honcho is analytics. After all, it’s how competitive businesses track their site performance and how they learn to understand user behavior. But what if I told you that you could gain even deeper insights into your domain’s performance? 

How so?

With DNS analytics! Keep reading to see how:

DNS Analytics, Query Reports, and Statistics, Oh My

DNS analytics may very well be the biggest hidden gem in the industry.  I say hidden because it’s not widely offered, and therefore, tragically overlooked.  

What makes DNS analytics so special? 

Because they provide a granular view of your domain’s activity on the DNS level—something web analytics suites can’t do.  With DNS analytics, you have access to your domain’s query activity, raw data logs, and statistics, as well as charts and interactive maps for the ultimate visual representation of real-time and historical DNS data.

DNS Analytics Features

Now for a deeper dive into our analytics platform:

Account Analytics 

1. Total Queries: An at-a-glance overview of all recent query activity across domains in your Constellix account.
2. Queries / Time: This bar chart includes daily query counts for all domains during the current billing cycle.

1. Queries / Domain: Our Queries/Domains table provides even deeper insight into your DNS infrastructure by allowing you to compare DNS activity between domains and view queries for a specified time period. With this option, you can easily identify any unusual traffic patterns.

Domain Analytics

1. Domain Overview: This quick stats feature provides an overview of your domain activity for the current billing period.
2. Queries by Location (map): When using our interactive map, you’ll get a clear visualization of all of your domains’ query counts at each of our global points of presence (PoPs). Mousing over each data point will provide you with the query count at a specific PoP. You can further refine your results by analyzing one domain at a time. This tool is especially beneficial for troubleshooting sudden query spikes, examining server loads and zones, and evaluating the impact of configuration changes.

1. Queries by Location (table and time-series): The Queries by Location time-series option allows you to view query counts by location in 30-minute intervals. You can access up to 65 days worth of data. This feature helps you gain a better understanding of your DNS infrastructure, identify users over IPv6, analyze DDoS and other DNS-based attacks, and pinpoint your most- or least-used DNS records.
   

DNS Query logging

‍Query logging lets you view live query traffic through one of our PoPs. This data is in raw tabular format and is an excellent tool for identifying misconfigurations, finding stale records, comparing data over time, detecting attacks, and pinpointing excessive CDN requests.

Query logs can be filtered by:
City
EDNS client
IP version
Record name
Record type
Source address

DNS Record Usage

Contellix’s Record Usage tool provides you with real-time stats (RTS) of your DNS record usage. This feature is what tells you how your DNS resources are being used. RTS can be filtered by record name, type, location, and IP protocol. The retrieved data helps to track down difficult-to-identify system misconfigurations. Another unique use case for RTS is for tracking web pages and marketing campaigns on the DNS level, as you can see which records are generating activity and when.

DNS Analytics: Domain Troubleshooting

With Constellix’s DNS analytics, you’ll be able to unlock your domain’s true power and potential. Not only will you have access to previously inaccessible DNS data, but you’ll also have an incredible tool for troubleshooting and detecting/analyzing DNS attacks. 

But it doesn’t stop there! 

Our analytics platform can also track marketing campaigns and web page performances. Now, how cool is that?