D-Zone brings robust and high-performance DNS service to University of Saskatchewan

.CA offers made-in-Canada infrastructure footprint for leading Canadian websites and applications

SASKATOON, Sept. 29, 2015 /CNW/ - With the adoption of CIRA's D-Zone Anycast DNS, the University of Saskatchewan has reinforced its Internet infrastructure, adding resiliency and enhanced performance to its campus network and public-facing Internet applications. One of Canada's leading public research facilities, the U of S serves more than 20,000 students and has attracted top talent from across the globe in agriculture, cancer treatment and physics, including synchrotron light research.

The university is home to the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron, the VIDO-InterVac (Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization – International Vaccine Centre) and the Cobalt-60 Cancer Therapy Unit, and has a long history of research innovation. The adoption of D-Zone is the latest technological enhancement that will offer the university's users one of the highest-reliability and highest-performing web presences in the country, aiding in the process of information sharing for distinguished researchers and instructors.

Key Facts

• Implementation of D-Zone Anycast DNS secondary service to respond to all external DNS queries is part of a solid IT risk management plan.
• With more than 200 academic programs, the U of S needed to ensure it was more resilient to attacks against its name server and interactive communication portals, such as email.
• As a leading research university, users are often sharing time-sensitive information. D-Zone offers Layer 3 routing, which means all queries on the site are routed to the closest name server, improving performance.
• The massive distributed capacity and bandwidth of the D-Zone Anycast DNS service adds DDoS resiliency and allows the university to successfully transmit a wealth of data with fewer bottlenecks.

Executive quotes

"The University of Saskatchewan is a large institution that oversees the transaction of an incredible amount of data. D-Zone enhances the speed and security of that data by offering various routing options for DNS queries, while at the same time ensuring an outage or attack doesn't threaten the university IT infrastructure. CIRA's public mandate and experience working with the Canadian research and education community makes this partnership a great fit."

- David Chiswell, vice president of product development at CIRA

About The University of Saskatchewan

The University of Saskatchewan was founded in 1907 as an agricultural college and quickly established itself as one of Canada's foremost research facilities in a number of fields. Out of its science roots, the university became very well-known for its innovations in physics, immunization and cancer research. Offering more than 200 academic programs, and as the only Canadian university with ties to Oxford University in England, the university has graduated reputable experts in dozens of fields and is world renowned. It is one of Canada's top public research institutions, as measured by the number of research chairs.

About CIRA and .CA

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority manages the .CA top-level domain on behalf of all Canadians. A member-driven organization, CIRA represents Canada's Internet internationally, develops and implements policies that support Canada's Internet and continues to develop new products to support a robust, secure and reliable DNS.

SOURCE Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)

For more information or interview requests: Ryan Saxby Hill, Communications manager, CIRA, [email protected], 613-316-2397