DNS Shield, originally offered by UltraDNS before its acquisition by NeuStar, is a way of speeding up and masking authoritative DNS servers by broadly but deploying them hidden on ISPs’ networks.
NeuStar’s servers, which are authoritative for .org, .us, .biz and others, are deployed next to ISPs’ recursive DNS servers — those address books that end users first consult when visiting web sites or sending email — in such a way so that they cannot be easily seen from the internet.
Under the deal with ISC, the F-root that ISC manages will be hosted on DNS Shield in much the same way as .org or .us would be. The F-root is one of the 13 logical roots of the DNS, providing lookups for all of the internet’s top-level domains.
What this basically means is that while DNS Shield could already tell you where to find neustar.biz or isc.org, it will now also be able to quickly and more securely tell your web browser where to find, for example, the master list of .uk or .de domains.
ISC has long been one of the leaders when it comes to root DNS security and redundancy. For the last four years, the organization has been building out a network of F-root mirrors using DNS anycast. There are now 40 F-root sites in 32 countries, according to ISC.
