Tag: DNS

User trust at the heart of the latest CSA Summit in Cologne

From 22 to 24 April, Cologne hosted the Certified Senders Alliance Summit on the theme of “Trust fuels the future”. The event marked the 20th anniversary of the initiative.

Corporate communications have changed dramatically over the last 20 years with the rise of social networks. For example, Instagram now has more than 2 billion monthly users, YouTube more than 2.5 billion and Facebook more than 3 billion. These platforms were all launched between 2004 and 2010. While they have become an integral part of companies’ communications plans for addressing their users, the use of email is still very high, as there are still so many uses for email: sending email campaigns, newsletters, invoices or for example order confirmations. According to Statista, the overall volume of emails increased by 4.3% in 2023 compared with the previous year, with almost 347.3 billion emails sent worldwide every day. Another fact: on average, a person receives around 121 emails a day. These figures underline that email is not about to disappear.

Gartner nevertheless points out that concerns about email security are growing, with few companies escaping security incidents, with increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks using malicious links or attachments, for example, and data losses often linked to careless behaviour or human error. With this in mind, every year CSA brings together experts from the email ecosystem to discuss best practices and solutions for improving email quality and trust. The event is organised around a series of workshops, sessions, conferences and masterclasses.

Nameshield, which sponsored the event, pointed out that there can be no email security without secure domain names, which are critical business assets, and without a robust, high-performance DNS infrastructure. Email security therefore depends on the choice of your domain name provider and the cyber-security solutions it is able to offer its customers. These include the DMARC protocol, which protects users against fraudulent messages. Customised brand extensions also known as dot brands are another way of building brand confidence in the run-up to the next round of new generic extensions scheduled for April 2026.

Contact your Nameshield consultant for more information on all our solutions.

DNS and HTTP(S) redirects – How do they work together?

In the world of websites and domain names, it is common to want to redirect the use of a domain name to another – e.g. in the address bar of a browser – to access a website. For example:

  • Redirect a-great-website.com to www.a-great-website.com
  • Redirect www.to-be-redirected.com to www.a-great-website.com

However, it is not always easy to understand how all of this works, nor how to configure these redirects. Do I have to configure redirection at DNS level? At my web server level? Both? One or the other?

The purpose of this article is to detail the distinction between DNS «redirect» and HTTP redirect, and to present how these two protocols work together.

In the rest of the article, we will not distinguish between HTTP and HTTPS (HTTP protocol secured by a certificate). Everything that is said here is valid for both.

Understanding the difference between DNS and HTTP

DNS and HTTP are two internet protocols that are both essential to the proper functioning of the web, but do not have the same purpose.

Let’s take the example of a user who wants to access blog.nameshield.com. He enters blog.nameshield.com in the address bar of his favorite browser.

  1. Before the browser can send a request to obtain the content of the website’s home page, it must know to which IP address it must send the request. This is where DNS comes in. The browser sends a DNS query (using DNS protocol) to a resolver: «Give me the IP address associated with blog.nameshield.com». It gets back an IP address (81.92.84.102) configured on an authoritative DNS server. We’re talking about the resolution of the blog.nameshield.com domain name.
  2. The browser can then send the HTTP request (using HTTP protocol) to the HTTP server (or web server) whose IP address it has just obtained: «Give me the content of the web page blog.nameshield.com». In return, it receives the content of the page to display.

The DNS protocol offers types of records that allow to «redirect» one domain to another: especially the CNAME type. Although DNS “redirect” is easily referred to, the term “alias” is more appropriate. Strictly speaking, this does not redirect, but indicates that the domain we are resolving is an alias of another domain. You must then resolve this other domain to obtain the IP address you are looking for.

Let’s say we want to create a redirect from www.to-be-redirected.com to www.a-great-website.com. If we configure the DNS zone of to-be-redirected.com with a CNAME record of this type: www.to-be-redirected.com CNAME www.a-great-website.com, that basically means : “You want to know the IP address associated with www.to-be-redirected.com? Well, look for the one associated with www.a-great-website.com and you’ll get your answer.” Another DNS query will be sent to resolve www.a-great-website.com and obtain the IP address. The browser will have the IP address of the HTTP server we are interested in (the one hosting the website www.a-great-website.com), but this will not change the content of the HTTP request sent by the browser: “Give me the content of the web page www.to-be-redirected.com”.

You may notice that the HTTP request sent by the browser contains the name of the website (or host – here www.to-be-redirected.com) that you want to access. Indeed, a single server (and therefore a single IP address) can host dozens of different websites. It will only respond positively to HTTP requests containing a host for which it is configured. Knowing the IP address of the web server is not enough, one must also address an HTTP request to which it is able to respond. Sending a request http://www.to-be-redirected.com to some server configured only to respond to http://www.a-great-website.com will not work!

The HTTP protocol also offers a redirection system (here it is the appropriate term). An HTTP server can be configured to redirect one host to another. For example, if it receive HTTP requests “Give me the content of the web page www.to-be-redirected.com.”, it will answer “This resource is redirected to http://www.a-great-website.com.” Then the browser will repeat the following steps:

  1. DNS lookup of www.a-great-website.com
  2. Send a request http://www.a-great-website.com to the IP address obtained
  3. Display the web page obtained

How to make DNS and HTTP redirects work well together?

Let’s recap:

  • DNS is used to resolve a domain name to obtain an IP address.
  • HTTP requests are sent to an IP address, and contain the host of the website you want to access.
  • HTTP servers can return different contents depending on the host present in the request: a web page they host, a redirect for which they have been configured, or an error if the host is unknown to them.

So, to make a redirect work correctly (still using the same example), you must have:

  • A DNS record in the to-be-redirected.com zone to associate the www host with the IP address of a web server…
  • …web server on which a redirect from http://www.to-be-redirected.com to http://www.a-great-website.com must be configured.

How Nameshield can help you

Nameshield offers an HTTP (and HTTPS) redirect service that simplifies the configuration of these redirections, which you can use from the moment Nameshield is the DNS provider of your domain to be redirected. Simply go to the technical configuration interface of your domain name, then in the tab «HTTP redirections». You can then create a new redirect on the host of your choice, specifying various parameters (such as the repercussion of directories and query parameters). Our system will then automatically:

  • Update the DNS zone to add records (A/AAAA or CNAME depending on the host) to point to the IP address of the Nameshield HTTP redirect server. In the zone configuration interface, a dedicated icon makes it easy to distinguish these automatically added records.
  • Configure a new redirect on our HTTP server (with an anycast architecture if you have a premium offer) according to the requested parameters.

Your redirect is then operational, you have nothing more to do. No changes are necessary with your web hosting provider.

If you want to change the destination of an existing HTTP redirect, you just have to modify the existing redirection from the same interface (no need to delete it and then to create a new one). No changes are expected on the DNS, since the host already points to our HTTP redirect server. Our system will modify the HTTP server configuration, and your new redirect will be effective in a few minutes.

If you have any questions about this article, please contact your customer support team.

Meet Nameshield on the it-sa from 10th to 12th October 2023 in Nuremberg, Germany

Meet Nameshield from 10th to 12th October in Nuremberg at a new edition of the it-sa, the absolutely must-attend meeting of the IT security sector!

As the “Home of IT Security“, it-sa stands for both a comprehensive range of information and networking and knowledge exchange on the topics of data protection and IT security.

The three-day programme includes talks, workshops, discussion panels, one-to-one meetings and opportunities for networking…

Meet us on site: Hall 7, Stand 7-214, in cooperation with eco, the Association of the Internet Industry.

Exchange with our team and discover our global solutions that satisfy the requirements of your DNS security. Discover our product for a high-availability of your strategic domains: “DNS Bastion“.

For more information, visit the event website: https://www.itsa365.de/

Nameshield’s DNS Premium labelled France Cybersecurity

The digital transformation of companies creates an increasing dependence on networks.

Websites, emails, VPN, applications… these company key services must remain accessible. An interruption would be dramatic.

DNS is the access point to all these services. It translates domain names into IP addresses and routes traffic to these services. It is increasingly exposed to attacks, yet remains poorly secured due to a lack of knowledge. With the increase in threats, maintaining its DNS infrastructure is becoming more and more complex.

Securing strategic domain names by hosting them on highly secure DNS offering permanent availability, to avoid any interruption to company key services, has become a necessity.

Nameshield, certified ISO 27001 on all its registrar activities, protects companies’ critical digital services against cyber threats, and proposes a DNS Premium solution that ensures high availability of online services.

Nameshield’s DNS Premium has been labelled France Cybersecurity since 2018. This label is a guarantee for users that Nameshield’s products and services present a level of quality in cybersecurity verified by an independent jury.

“Cybersecurity is at the heart of Nameshield’s DNA, through its CERT and ISO 27001 certification. In a sector dominated by American players, this label is the perfect way to highlight our sovereign solutions such as DNS Premium“, Christophe Gérard, Nameshield’s Products Director.

Find out more about our DNS Premium solution

The Centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans

The Centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans Race

The weekend of June 10 and 11 marked the Centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s biggest race in endurance car racing. During the entire week, it was possible to attend the practice sessions and numerous events organized in parallel.

The long-awaited Centenary edition lived up to all its promises. Battles in all categories, tension right through to Sunday, and 24 hours later, it was Ferrari who came out on top and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans Race 2023, a victory 58 years after the brand’s last success.

Followed by millions of people, this international event was able to rely on Nameshield’s highly secure DNS infrastructure, offering permanent high availability, for its https://www.24h-lemans.com/ website. Traffic peaked throughout the event, and a record number of tickets sold ensured the success of the 24 Hours of Le Mans Centenary race!

Image source : www.24h-lemans.com