Registry Anycast DNS Performance and Global Latency Benchmark

Authoritative technical benchmark evaluating the global Anycast networks that power root servers and top-level domain registries. Measures median and P95 DNS resolution latency across six continents, Anycast Point of Presence (PoP) density, and DDoS defense capacity.

11.8 ms

Fastest Mean Latency

320 PoPs

Largest Footprint

100%

IPv6 BGP Dual-Stack

280+ Tbps

Peak DDoS Mitigation

Simulate Global Authoritative Query Latency Test synthetic DNS UDP/53 round-trip resolution times from 10 global metropolitan probe locations

Vantage Point Probe

Fastest Resolver In Region

Cloudflare (7.8 ms)

Cloudflare Registry Anycast

7.8 ms

Amazon Route 53 (AWS)

8.5 ms

Verisign Atlas

9.2 ms

UltraDNS / GoDaddy Registry

10.4 ms

PacketFabric / NS1

11.0 ms

RcodeZero DNS (nic.at)

14.5 ms

Nominet Anycast

15.0 ms

CIRA Fury DNS

9.5 ms

Authoritative Anycast Cloud Benchmark Table Hardware footprint, latency percentiles, and protocol readiness

Anycast Network	Global PoPs	Mean Latency	P95 Latency	IPv6 Dual-Stack	DoH / DoT	DDoS Capacity	Key Registry Deployments
Cloudflare Registry Anycast	320	11.8 ms	24.1 ms	100% BGP	Production	280+ Tbps	.cf, .ga, Cloudflare Registrar roots, Enterprise ccTLDs
Amazon Route 53 (AWS)	210	13.5 ms	26.8 ms	100% BGP	Production	150+ Tbps	.aws, .amazon, Enterprise Brand TLDs
Verisign Atlas	135	14.2 ms	28.5 ms	100% BGP	Pilot / Testing	100+ Tbps	.com, .net, A/J Root Servers, .gov, .edu
UltraDNS / GoDaddy Registry	115	16.5 ms	32.0 ms	100% BGP	Planned Roadmap	60+ Tbps	.co, .biz, .us, 200+ gTLDs
PacketFabric / NS1	95	17.2 ms	34.1 ms	100% BGP	Pilot / Testing	50+ Tbps	Selected ccTLDs & high-traffic gTLDs
RcodeZero DNS (nic.at)	85	18.0 ms	36.2 ms	100% BGP	Pilot / Testing	40+ Tbps	.at, .pt, .hu, European sovereign ccTLDs
Nominet Anycast	75	19.1 ms	38.0 ms	100% BGP	Pilot / Testing	35+ Tbps	.uk, .cymru, .wales, 40+ brand TLDs
CIRA Fury DNS	60	21.0 ms	42.0 ms	100% BGP	Planned Roadmap	30+ Tbps	.ca, .ie, .nz, Sovereign ccTLD partners

How Anycast BGP Routing Secures TLD Availability Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Anycast routing, and synthetic latency dynamics

Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) & Anycast Resilience

Unlike unicast addressing where a single IP address corresponds to one physical host, Anycast DNS announces the exact same IP prefix from hundreds of Points of Presence (PoPs) worldwide using BGP. Resolvers on the internet automatically route UDP queries to the topologically nearest datacenter via standard internet routing metrics.

This architecture delivers two critical security and performance properties for TLD registries: First, latency is minimized because queries are terminated locally rather than traversing transoceanic fiber cables. Second, volumetric Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are geographically localized and absorbed by individual edge nodes without cascading to the global root zone.