Anycast

The same IP address is announced from many locations and the internet routes each user to the nearest one. CDNs and global load balancers rely on it to fail over without waiting for DNS caches.

Where it shows up in real systems

  • Global load balancer

    A single anycast IP attracts users to the nearest point of presence, then traffic rides the provider backbone to the best region. Unlike DNS failover, switching regions does not wait for resolver caches to expire.

    In production: AWS Global Accelerator, Google Cloud global external LB, Azure Front Door, Cloudflare Load Balancing

  • DDoS protection

    Floods of millions of packets per second are dropped by a provider's global network. The advanced tiers cost a fixed monthly fee but include attack response teams and cost protection for the scaling an attack triggers.

    In production: AWS Shield Advanced, Cloudflare DDoS protection, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor

See it break, then fix it

Build an architecture, send it a day of traffic and outages, and learn why it holds or fails. Free to start.

Open the learning path Open the sandbox