IPv4 Geographic Distribution

What This Check Does

The IPv4 Geographic Distribution check verifies that your active nameserver IPv4 addresses are physically located in more than one country. Geographic distribution protects your DNS infrastructure from country-level disruptions including natural disasters, network outages, political events, or targeted attacks.

DNS Spy geolocates each nameserver IPv4 address and checks that they span at least two different countries.

Why It Matters

Concentrating all nameservers in a single country creates a geographic single point of failure. Submarine cable cuts, regional internet outages, government-ordered shutdowns, or country-specific DDoS attacks could take all your nameservers offline simultaneously. Geographic distribution ensures that even if DNS infrastructure in one country is disrupted, nameservers in other countries continue serving your domain.

Additionally, geographically distributed nameservers can improve performance by being closer to users in different regions, reducing DNS resolution latency for a global audience.

NIST SP 800-81, Section 3.3, recommends diversifying nameserver placement to avoid single points of failure, including geographic diversity.

NIST SP 800-81 Compliance

Section 3.3 of the NIST Secure DNS Deployment Guide addresses nameserver architecture resilience, including the recommendation for geographic diversity. DNS Spy automates this compliance check by verifying your nameservers are distributed across multiple countries, aligned with NIST guidelines.

Good vs. Bad Configuration

Bad Configuration

All nameservers have IPv4 addresses geolocated to the same country (e.g., all in the United States). A regional internet disruption could affect all nameservers simultaneously.

Good Configuration

Nameservers are distributed across multiple countries: ns1.example.com in the US, ns2.example.com in Germany, ns3.example.com in Singapore. Regional disruptions cannot take down all nameservers.

How DNS Spy Monitors This

DNS Spy geolocates each nameserver IPv4 address during every monitoring cycle and verifies multi-country distribution. If all nameservers are in the same country, an alert is triggered. DNS Spy tracks geographic changes over time, alerting you if provider changes reduce your geographic diversity.