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UltraDNS Corporation, the world's leading provider of Managed DNS services, today announced the deployment of the DNS Shield™, a revolutionary extension of the UltraDNS infrastructure that provides new levels of performance and security to the Internet. UltraDNS has partnered with leading Internet service and network providers to include America Online, a subsidiary of Time Warner, Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), Verio, a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Communications, and Earthlink (Nasdaq: ELNK) to ensure that the millions of domains powered by UltraDNS are always available to their customers.

The implementation of the DNS Shield involves the deployment of UltraDNS authoritative DNS servers within the heart of the network of each participating partner, creating a hardened, secure, and robust Internet infrastructure and providing unprecedented levels of performance and security for their customers. By deploying the DNS Shield, the ISP Partner's core DNS infrastructure connects directly to the UltraDNS network, creating a fully trusted and protected environment for DNS resolution. This combination provides the most advanced protection available against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and pharming attacks. UltraDNS estimates that over 100 million U.S. Internet users will be benefiting from the DNS Shield by the end of 2005.

"Email, external web sites and Internet-facing applications may fail if external DNS fails, and thus are only as reliable as DNS. This is a critical infrastructure issue that should not be ignored," said Lydia Leong, Research Director, Gartner Inc. "Key requirements for DNS include high availability, redundancy, and geographic diversity, as well as resilience to attacks."

The UltraDNS authoritative servers deployed within each partner network are functionally identical to those of the public UltraDNS network currently distributed across four continents. All customers of an UltraDNS DNS Shield partner benefit from enhanced security against network catastrophe because all DNS queries are resolved locally within the ISP's infrastructure. In the event of network catastrophe on the public Internet, DNS Shield partner customers' queries are isolated from the effects and continue to be resolved locally ensuring domains powered by UltraDNS are 100% accessible. Since the DNS Shield replicates the existing public Internet hierarchy inside a private network, there is no additional complexity or administrative burden to network operators.

"The DNS Shield provides the most secure DNS environment in the world today and truly brings new levels of security to the Internet at large," said Rodney Joffe, Chairman and CTO, UltraDNS. "UltraDNS customers include the largest eCommerce and Fortune 1000 companies in the world as well as the most visited Top Level Domains. Uptime and availability for these properties are essential both for these companies and the Internet users who need to reach them. Our goal is to provide access to our global infrastructure through the DNS Shield to as many Internet users as possible."

UltraDNS is continuing to expand the reach of the DNS Shield on a priority based wait-list of major ISPs and Internet backbone providers who are taking a proactive approach to network security. The DNS Shield implementation is a core element of the ongoing global expansion of the public UltraDNS network, with anticipated future infrastructure deployments in South Asia and Latin America.™

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Related topics: DNS, Security