Akamai Edge DNS vs Infoblox DDI comparison

Akamai and Infoblox are both solutions in the Managed DNS category. Akamai is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5, while Infoblox is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8. Akamai holds a 3.1% mindshare in MDP, compared to Infoblox’s 7.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Infoblox users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Akamai Edge DNS and Infoblox DDI are competing in the domain management space. Akamai often leads in pricing and support, while Infoblox is noted for its extensive features.

Features: Akamai Edge DNS provides global reach, DDoS protection, and emphasizes security and reliability for enterprises. Infoblox DDI includes integrated DNS, DHCP, and IP address management, aiming to simplify network management with its comprehensive network control.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Edge DNS offers cloud-based deployment, allowing for quick integration and supported by responsive customer service. Infoblox DDI combines on-premises and cloud solutions, requiring a more complex setup but offering personalization options. Akamai is noted for faster support response times.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai Edge DNS generally has lower initial costs, focusing on long-term security value and ROI. Infoblox DDI presents higher upfront expenses, justified by advanced network capabilities and control, optimizing efficiency and reducing overhead for ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Edge DNS vs. Infoblox DDI Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Edge DNS vs. Infoblox DDI

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 2.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Edge DNS is 3.1%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox DDI is 7.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Featured Reviews

Michael Wills

Senior Network Systems Engineer at McKesson

Balances cost and functionality, speeds up provisioning, and reduces the DNS maintenance work drastically

The provisioning is great. They have an API service that is simple to use and very quick. The changes that we make are replicated worldwide in a matter of usually milliseconds, sometimes seconds. They are done very rapidly. That's something that's obviously priceless when we're dealing with things like DNS. It is great as an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management. It is very simple to use. It allows us to rapidly provision and deprovision things. We are all around happy with the solution. From a metrics standpoint, the solution that we came from had no metrics. So, it has been great. Their service team is excellent in taking the time to provide reports for both growth and strategic planning. It has been great.

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reviewer2248722

Ecommerce Architect Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Protects against troublesome bots, hackers, and different kinds of attacks

Integrating the tool into our existing network's architecture is a matter of redirecting from the Akamai instance over to a different cloud solution. Our security team is happy with the solution's infrastructure. Some security policies we have with Akamai control the overall configuration there. I've always been impressed with Akamai's overall approach and their suite of offerings. It's definitely a key player in the industry. Akamai is generally pretty innovative in terms of technologies, security level, web application firewall, and bot management. I can't really compare Akamai Edge DNS with other vendors, but I know Akamai does a good job. Akamai Edge DNS is a useful component in our infrastructure, hosting, and application side. I think it's just one of those must-have things. I think Akamai has some of its AI technologies plugged into the overall ecosystem. I haven't read up on it lately, but I'm sure it has some kind of offering for adapting to some of the attacks and keeping track of all the approaches. Akamai is a good vendor that comes up with a lot of innovations to protect against troublesome actors such as bots, hackers, and different kinds of attacks. They generally provide performance hosting and the Edge service to make the user experience for a site perform well and be efficient. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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Utpal Sinha

Sr Network Engineer at Momentive

An excellent tool that provides an overall centralized view of everything in an environment, majorly the security part

The three major features of Infoblox DDI are very good. Artificial intelligence is one of the areas in the solution where there are some shortcomings. When dealing with URLs, Infoblox needs a good team that takes care of the recategorizations. Zscaler is good since it can recategorize the website. Every day, millions of websites are newly launched, which may or may not be malicious. Malicious websites will get blocked if a company goes for recategorization. If the recategorization part is not taken care of properly, with millions of websites being launched every day, then the malicious websites will not get blocked. Zscaler has a good team to take care of the recategorization part within twenty-four hours, while Infoblox does not have such a team. Symantec and Palo Alto have good teams to take care of the recategorization part, while Infoblox does not have such types of teams. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the solution. The recategorization part takes longer with Infoblox DDI compared to other companies like Symantec, Zscaler, and Palo Alto.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The provisioning is great. They have an API service that is simple to use and very quick. The changes that we make are replicated worldwide in a matter of usually milliseconds, sometimes seconds. They are done very rapidly. That's something that's obviously priceless when we're dealing with things like DNS."

"We find that the low latency access to DNS queries has a direct effect on the customer experience. Visiting a site, whether it's an AdTech-based solution or marketing tech, the fact that whatever we're rendering on a page can be rendered better than the industry standard, in terms of time, ensures a better user experience."

"One of the features that is non-standard and that is very useful is the filtered DNS. We have set up our external VPN, which is what all our employees connect through, to use this feature. It's geolocation-aware. In that way, for India we set it up so that these are the servers that should be supporting things, and in the UK these servers, in the U.S. these servers, and in Sweden these ones."

"We leverage two things from Managed DNS that we couldn't do with any other solution. One is their filter chain technology, which allows us to shift some of the intelligence we need for the traffic steering to the DNS. The second one is data sources, which enables us to manipulate multiple records simultaneously using NS1's internal message DOS. In our case, we are trying to direct the traffic in over 150,000 different NS1 records to an arbitrary set of repeating responses."

"Monitoring is really important for us. We really care about reliability, and we want to make sure that we can remove some points of presence in our sector and in our edge network really fast when we experience any problems. So, monitoring that NS1 provides for DNS is really important for us."

"The fact that it's an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management is one of the reasons we looked into NS1. We use it for a lot of automation and metrics gathering and it's been great."

"Everything we download into our observability platform so that we can also track any changes in traffic behavior or things like that is also something that we use quite a lot. I'd say traffic management, the speed of updates, and observability are the top three things that we use."

"The Filter Chain is one of the most valuable features, for geo-load balancing and geo-fencing. The Filter Chain is the most useful because it allows us to do several things. With geo-fencing we can redirect a particular user to a particular answer. That's very valuable for us. Filter Chains with monitoring is our strategy to provide redundancy."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

"It is a very stable solution since it has a security feature that allows you to recover zone files if you accidentally delete them."

"We can maintain control of the configuration, and it seems to be covering the use case that we need."

"The best feature is the user interface."

"Infoblox DDI prioritizes DNS security, which is crucial for the security department."

"It offers an easy initial setup."

"Infoblox DDI is a good tool if you want to centralize everything in your environment...It is a stable solution."

"Infoblox has more technology patents than any of its competitors."

"One of the benefits of implementing Infoblox DDI is that it supports both RADIUS and TACACS+."

"The UI is quite user-friendly and the support is available 24/7."

"The most valuable feature of Infoblox DDI is its IP Address Management (IPAM) tool. This tool allows for the effective management of IP addresses and provides the capability to detect duplicates, hence its moniker "discovery." Another feature that I find particularly useful is the integration of DNS, which can be seamlessly integrated with your existing primary DNS server, making the overall experience much more seamless and efficient."

More Infoblox DDI pros

Cons

"We care about monitoring and telemetry work, and NS1 provides a pretty good system for monitoring. We can monitor our endpoints and points of presence around the world. If there are any issues, we can easily remove them from our network, but this area needs some improvement because it is not always reliable in NS1. In the past, we had a number of false-positive cases when the monitoring system told us about some problems in our infrastructure that were not true. NS1 is improving the system, and we are constantly talking about this with them. I know that they are releasing a new version of their monitoring system, which is really important for us, but this is a different area where we would expect them to improve."

"We would really like them to become a DNS registrar."

"I would love to see improvement in the testing capabilities they provide. They have a simulate-filter feature so that you can simulate how your traffic would flow, based on their Filter Chains. I believe that was shut off for quite some time. Having that as a way to test our load-balanced CDN structure would be fantastic."

"We use the geo load balancing functionality and there are a couple of things that are helpful there. But the language itself is something we had to get used to a little bit. Some of my folks made a few mistakes in rolling out the Filter Chain...The Filter Chain setup is a bit hard to grasp at first. It would also be nice to have a way to simulate changes in addition to staging."

"There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution."

"We use our client in our infrastructure to communicate with NS1. This client is a bit complex in the way that it is set up. NS1 has their own client solution that you can deploy into your platform to do this, but even that is a bit complex. So, I would like a very simple, thin, light API agent that we can deploy into our platform to communicate with NS1. That would be welcome."

"The Filter Chain simulation is really good in the UI, but it would be nice to have something similar in the API so that we could simulate and test things before we deploy them."

"I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. For example, I would like to be able to say, "Show me the top 10 records by total queries" in an easy-to-digest format."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

"The solution has a fairly complex setup with our cloud vendors, including Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle."

"CNAME flattening is a feature that Akamai does not support."

"There are some bugs and glitches that need attention."

"They need to reconsider their pricing for their SMB customers. It is a hurdle for them to manage the price."

"The solution is expensive."

"They need to provide more training and tutorials than what's provided on the website."

"Infoblox encounters some glitches, making it not entirely super stable."

"It would be helpful if we can log in and click on the server, and have the CLI pop up directly instead of using third-party software, like PuTTY, to log in."

"Every vendor or organization cannot purchase Infoblox DDI because of some license issues."

"The pricing is quite expensive, which is why I recommend it for medium and large enterprises and not for small businesses."

More Infoblox DDI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market and you get more value out of what you pay for it."

"From a cost standpoint, it's certainly not the most expensive out there, and it's also not the cheapest, but it does well to balance the cost and the functionality/reliability."

"We pay about $30,000 a month. We used to pay about $20,000 with Dyn every month, for lower volume than we're doing right now, but it had none of the features that we have available with NS1, so it was worth it for us. It seems competitive for us, given that we're doing 4.5 billion requests."

"The cost of this product is one of the reasons that we chose it."

"Everything can always be cheaper, but as it is today the pricing is fair."

"Since Akamai is the industry leader, I imagine the solution would be a little more expensive than some other vendors."

"The license of the solution is expensive, not including the hardware."

"Infoblox DDI is an expensive product."

"I would say the pricing falls between average and expensive. It's not a cheap product."

"Infoblox's subscription includes support."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

University

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NS1 Managed DNS?

For starters, Managed DNS from NS1 is an easy way to get the job done. Whether you're a novice or a pro, Managed DNS ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Akamai Edge DNS?

It is a very stable solution since it has a security feature that allows you to recover zone files if you accidentall...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Akamai Edge DNS?

The solution has a fairly complex setup with our cloud vendors, including Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Akamai Edge DNS?

Some of the use cases we looked at are site forwarding for the root domain to another record so we can maintain contr...

See all answers

What do you like most about Infoblox DDI?

Infoblox DDI is a good tool if you want to centralize everything in your environment...It is a stable solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Infoblox DDI?

We could have a CLI access directly in the UI. It would be helpful if we can log in and click on the server, and have...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Infoblox DDI?

I am using Infoblox primarily for DNS, ITAM solutions along with DHCP. We also have some servers deployed in the clou...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 41% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 18% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 5% of the time

Hurricane Electric Free DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 4% of the time

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Cloudflare vs Akamai Edge DNS

Compared 29% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Akamai Edge DNS

Compared 14% of the time

Quad9 vs Akamai Edge DNS

Compared 7% of the time

Azure DNS vs Akamai Edge DNS

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Akamai Edge DNS

Compared 6% of the time

More Akamai Edge DNS Competitors

BlueCat Integrity vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 42% of the time

Cloudflare vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 19% of the time

VitalQIP vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 12% of the time

Azure DNS vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 11% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 2% of the time

More Infoblox DDI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

December 2024

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Managed DNS

December 2024

Download Akamai Edge DNS product report

Buyer's Guide

Infoblox DDI

December 2024

Download Infoblox DDI product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

Akamai Fast DNS

No data available

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IBM

Akamai

Infoblox

Overview

Why

In a 24/7 world, customers demand applications, websites, and content that load instantly and are always on. When those connections are unreliable or slow, businesses don’t meet customer expectations, causing customers to leave. When that occurs, revenue may suffer.

What

IBM NS1 Connect delivers the high-performance, reliable, secure network connectivity that businesses need to meet increasingly sophisticated customer expectations. Leveraging a global network with a 100% uptime SLA, IBM has the capacity and scale to meet the needs of any business. IBM NS1 Connect takes performance to the next level, powering the sophisticated needs of enterprises with complex network infrastructures.

How

IBM NS1 Connect provides network connectivity solutions that give networking teams the visibility, control and automation needed to help ensure your business stays online by steering traffic to the ideal network connections for any given moment. IBM NS1 Connect also enables IT teams to identify network performance anomalies through deep insights into DNS data flows, allowing them to identify configuration problems or network issues that affect performance so they can quickly resolve them.

Details

IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service that provides authoritative, premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience. Revenue-generating applications require authoritative DNS resolution to keep critical applications and websites online. Unless your DNS infrastructure is always-on and resilient, network reliability and user experience will suffer, your network reliability may suffer, resulting in poor user experiences if revenue-generating critical applications and websites are not online. IBM NS1 Connect’s always-on, API-first architecture provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world with premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering. It also enables your IT teams to efficiently monitor networks, deploy changes and conduct routine maintenance.

IBM NS1 Connect uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that websites and applications are:

Online, all the time: Global network with 100% uptime SLA and DDoS protection
Fast: Top tier response and propagation times, custom traffic steering to optimize connections
Cheaper to run: Far less expensive than self-hosting
Automation friendly: API-first platform with Ansible/Terraform integrations and support for Pliant rapid network automation
Easier to troubleshoot: Unique DNS data insights offering

Designed for enterprises looking to optimize their DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service delivering authoritative DNS and advanced traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience and provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world. NS1 Connect streamlines DNS management by automating both simple and complex DNS configuration tasks via API and preconfigured integrations, so you can spend more time on higher-value work.

IBM NS1 Connect is delivered through our unified delivery platform. The cloud-based platform gives networking teams the visibility, control and automation needed to help ensure your business stays online by steering traffic to the ideal network connections for any given moment. IBM NS1 Connect solutions also enable IT teams to identify network performance anomalies through deep insights into DNS data flows, allowing them to identify configuration problems or network issues that affect performance so they can quickly resolve them.

For enterprises looking to further optimize DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect offers rich DNS data analytics to streamline the identification of the root cause of anomalies within traffic.

IBM NS1 Connect Features

Global anycast DNS network: Enjoy fast connections to consumers around the globe through an anycast network with 26 points of presence (PoPs).
100% uptime SLA on DNS resolution: Maximize uptime and revenue generation with resilient, always-on, authoritative DNS.
API-first architecture: Integrate and automate workflows with NS1 Connect's well-documented API; every line of code starts as an API call, all functionality is available through the API.
Real-time user monitoring (RUM)-based traffic steering: Uses real-time intelligence on network performance and availability to direct DNS connections to the best available application resource; the widest range of filter options and data sources in the industry, not data that is extrapolated from sampling; the most flexible, granular controls for your network.
Built-in resilience: Add a single-tenant, redundant DNS layer and manage it from a single control plane as your primary DNS.
Managed DNS for China: Improve performance for the Chinese mainland by segmenting traffic with NS1 Connect’s Managed DNS for China.
DNS insights: Get a better understanding of DNS traffic patterns by mining your DNS data to identify security issues, misconfigurations and performance issues.
DDoS protection: Cap your query-based spending with protection against unexpected surges in traffic from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Uptime monitor: Quickly identify issues and automatically adjust DNS traffic steering configurations with native health check alerts.
DevOps tool integrations: Preconfigured integrations with leading DevOps tools including Ansible and Terraform to help automate routine maintenance, manage data sources and feeds.
Propagation speed: fastest propagation in the industry, measured in seconds not minutes; worldwide propagation in under five seconds.
Independence: neutral arbiter between infrastructure services (CDNs, clouds).

IBM NS1 Connect helps enterprises modernize and optimize networking infrastructure to provide customers with faster connections to websites, applications, services and content.

Discover Akamai DNS and its benefits of high availability and performance, and resilience against DDoS attacks backed by a fully guaranteed uptime SLA.

Network landscapes are rapidly evolving, driven by trends in hybrid and multi-cloud transformation, the IoT and distributed workforces. Infoblox is uniquely able to support organizations in this challenging environment because our solutions support DNS, DHCP and IP address management. These are the critical network services collectively known as DDI that make all network interactions possible.

Sample Customers

Avast Software, Bloomberg L.P., BBC, Carfax, CNBC LLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Disney Streaming, Dropbox, EBAY Inc, Gannett Media Corp, Salesforce, Wayfair, Workday

Otto Group

Adobe, Aflac, UCSD, Airbus, Amgen, Apple

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Edge DNS vs. Infoblox DDI

December 2024

Free Report: Akamai Edge DNS vs. Infoblox DDI

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Edge DNS vs. Infoblox DDI and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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We monitor all Managed DNS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.