Presented by Angelique Medina

1. Owning End-to-End
Application Experience
Angelique Medina
Head of Internet Intelligence and Product
Marketing

2. 2
© 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Apps
Customer
DX
Your
People
Workforce
DX
Deliver stellar digital
experiences to users
Keep workers connected and
enjoying seamless app performance
Optimize and sustain the flow
of your digital supply chain
Holistic view into digital experience across your business
Infrastructure
Enterprise
DX
See and Improve Every Digital Experience
Your Your

4. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Digital
30%
Increase in 2 years
The new economy is
Source: The App Attention Index 2021, AppDynamics.
500M
By 2023
Source: IDC
Number of New Applications
Daily App Usage
85%
In 2021
Users considering apps critical
Source: The App Attention Index 2021

5. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Stakes are high
to deliver
Users expect perfect experiences
Switch to an
alternative digital
service/application
Abandon or delete
the digital service/
application
permanently
Contact the
digital service/
application
brand for help
Tell other people
about my
negative
experience

6. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
App Complexity is Exploding…
SaaS
SaaS
SaaS
SaaS
SaaS
SERVICE
PROVIDERS
COLOCATION
SECURITY
CLOUD
PROVIDERS

7. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Typical focus is application side optimization, but...
Your App
PAYMENT

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PAYMENT
Reality Check: Internet is the X-Factor in Experience
DNS
BGP
ISP
CDN

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PAYMENT
Reality Check: App Dependencies are Growing
BGP
ISP
CDN
DNS SaaS Apps
Services
APIs
Data Center
Cloud

10. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Users CDN Your App
BGP
ISP
DNS
Step 1: DNS – Where are we going?

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Users CDN Your App
BGP
ISP
DNS
Root Server
TLD Server
Authoritative
Server
Step 1: DNS – Where are we going?

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Users BGP
ISP
DNS CDN Your App
Step 2: How do we get there?

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Users Your App
CDN
BGP
ISP
DNS
Step 3: CDNs – Do we have to go far?

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Your App
SaaS Apps
Cloud APIs
Data
Center
Backend
Services
Step 4: Rinse and repeat for service and APIs calls

15. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThousandEyes Internet and Cloud Intelligence
Visibility from
any user to any
app over any
network —
especially the
Internet

16. © 1992–2022 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
How we enable exceptional digital experience
Unmatched
Performance
Insight
1000s of
Global Vantage
Points
Innovations for
Meaningful
Actions
Pre-deployed in 100s of cities
Seamless deployment in cloud,
DC and other enterprise sites
X-Layer Correlation
Algorithmic Outage Detection
Global Internet Weather Map
Forecasting and Recommendations
App experience
DNS Performance
End-to-end network path
Hop-by-hop metrics
BGP routing
API monitoring

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Journey to the Edge

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It’s all about the Acronyms…DNS, BGP, CDN
• DNS and BGP not just essential to get users to you—they are
performance levers
• Both play important role in resiliency and recovery planning
• They are attractive points of attack—but also prone to simple error
• CDNs can provide a turnkey global edge—but problems and outages
can and do occur
• CDNs have their own preferences with DNS and BGP and are
subject to issues like everyone else (same with cloud providers)
18

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Example: AWS Cloudfront
19
DNS load
balancing

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Example: Cloudflare
20
BGP Anycast

21. © 2021 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 21
Quick DNS Review

22. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates.
What is the IP address for www.amazon.com?
22
DNS
DNS
?
205.251.242.103

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Why not use IPs For websites?
23
BRKAPP-1006
VS

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DNS Resolvers and Authoritative DNS
24
Me
DNS Resolver Authoritative
Nameserver
What is the IP for
login.mail.com?
Let me find out
for you.
The IP is
205.251.242.103
205.251.242.103
205.251.242.103
? ?

25. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Anatomy of a domain
login.mail.com.
Top level
domain (tld)
root
Second level
domain (sld)
Host or
subdomain
25

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Recursion: Root, TLD and customer authoritative
26
DNS Resolver
mail.com
Nameserver
I only know
where root
nameservers are.
The IP is
205.251.242.103
.com
Nameserver
Try asking mail.com
name servers
Root
Nameserver
Try asking .com
name serves
What is the IP address for login.mail.com?
?
.mail.com name server IPs

27. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Recursion: CDNs
27
BRKAPP-1006
DNS Resolver
mail.com
Nameserver
I don’t have the IP! Look here:
mailcom.cdn.com
.com
Nameserver
Root
Nameserver
What is the IP address for login.mail.com?
?
.mail.com name server IPs

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Recursion: CDNs
28
DNS Resolver
Recursion for
login.mail.com
Recursion for
mailcom.cdn.com
cdn.com

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DNS Load Balancing
SaaS app
US Edge
DNS
Resolver
SaaS app
Authoritative
DNS
Employee in
US HQ
The IP of your DNS
resolver is located in the
US so I will hand back the
IP of our US servers
29

30. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
DNS Load Balancing
DNS
Resolver
SaaS app
Authoritative
DNS
Employee
in Australia
HQ
SaaS app
Australia Edge
The IP of your DNS
resolver is located in the
U.S., so I will hand back
the IP of our U.S. servers.
SaaS app
US Edge
30

31. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
DNS Load Balancing
SaaS app
US Edge
DNS
Resolver
SaaS app
Authoritative
DNS
Employee in
US HQ
Employee
in Australia
HQ
SaaS app
Australia
Edge
The IP of your DNS
resolver is located in the
U.S., so I will hand back
the IP of our U.S. servers
DNS
Resolver
Further reading:
EDNS Client Subnet (ECS)
31

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DNS: What can go wrong?
• DNS availability
o Is the service down? Where in the DNS hierarchy is the problem?
• DNS performance
o Is DNS slow? Where is the bottleneck?
• DNS mappings
o Is the response optimal?
• DNS hijacking
o Are users intentionally misdirected?
• App availability
o Is DNS pointing to something broken? Am I able to point it elsewhere? Is my DNS
record TTL too long?
32

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Best Practices
• Monitor critical domains and subdomains — including full
delegation chain (root to IP)
• Alert on availability, performance, and mappings
• Correlate with app and network layers to understand impact
• Use collective intelligence (Internet Insights) to validate provider
issues
• Have options to redirect users through DNS records (maintain
control, redundancy, and factor in TTL values)
33

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Quick BGP Review

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What is BGP?
35
IP Address
52.114.124.1
Microsoft
AS 8075
Tier 1 ISP
AS 3356
Regional ISP
AS 7922
Come to me
for any IPs in
52.112.0.0/14
Come through
me for any IPs
in 52.112.0.0/14
How do I get to
52.114.124.1?

36. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
BGP: What can go wrong?
• Misconfigurations
• Sub-optimal routing
• Route leaks
• Route hijacking
• Route flapping
• Zombie
announcements
36

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Best Practices
• Monitor critical prefixes
• Set alerts for reachability, mis-origination, path changes
• Understand impact on network traffic (cross layer insight key)
• Understand peering relationships of providers and impact on
preferred paths and network traffic
• Have a plan in place to rapidly redirect traffic due to outages,
hijackings, etc.
• Provide detailed evidence (sharelinks) to providers for faster
remediation
37

38. © 2021 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 38
Edge to Origin

39. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
CDN Test Architecture
Vantage
Points
CDN
Edge nodes
1
2
3
User to Edge
User to Edge
(content fetched
from origin)
User to Origin
(directly)
Origins
1 Cache performance — Vantage points to CDN edge (static/cached content)
Origin performance – baseline measurement from Vantage points to each of the origins
directly
Non-cached performance – Vantage points to CDN edge (edge nodes serving
dynamic/non-cached content fetched from origin)
2
3
4x AWS
4x Azure
4x GCP
1x DC (OH)
248x Cloud Agents
Akamai
Cloudflare
Cloudfront
Fastly

40. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
AWS Cloudfront to Cloud-hosted Origins
CDN Vantage
Points
Continent
Origin Cloud Provider/Region
Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3 Rank 4
Cloudfront Africa
AWS/Europe
(2192)
Azure/Europe
(2274)
GCP/Europe
(2865)
AWS/US East
(3539)
Cloudfront Asia
AWS/Japan
(1125)
GCP/Japan
(1343)
Azure/Japan
(1380)
AWS/US West
(2479)
Cloudfront Europe
AWS/Europe
(684)
Azure/Europe
(730)
GCP/Europe
(854)
Azure/US East
(1619)
Cloudfront North America
GCP/US East
(897)
GCP/US West
(905)
Azure/US East
(921)
AWS/US West
(953)
Cloudfront Oceania
Azure/Japan
(2211)
AWS/Japan
(2225)
GCP/Japan
(2257)
AWS/US West
(2640)
Cloudfront South America
Azure/US East
(1899)
GCP/US East
(2109)
AWS/US East
(2462)
GCP/US West
(2575)

41. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Akamai to Cloud Connectivity
CDN Vantage
Points
Continent
Origin Cloud Provider/Region
Rank 1 Rank 2 Rank 3 Rank 4
Akamai Africa
Azure/US West
(2015)
Azure/Europe
(2645)
AWS/Europe
(2674)
GCP/Europe
(3004)
Akamai Asia
Azure/US West
(1034)
Azure/Japan
(1383)
GCP/Japan
(1401)
AWS/Japan
(1497)
Akamai Europe
Azure/Europe
(741)
AWS/Europe
(745)
GCP/Europe
(933)
Azure/US West
(1069)
Akamai North America
Azure/US West
(699)
AWS/US East
(964)
GCP/US East
(974)
Azure/US East
(997)
Akamai Oceania
Azure/US West
(1338)
AWS/Japan
(2388)
Azure/Japan
(2401)
GCP/Japan
(2498)
Akamai South America
Azure/US West
(1032)
Azure/US East
(2265)
GCP/US East
(2380)
AWS/US East
(2408)

42. © 2021 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 42
Service Dependencies

43. © 2022 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Takeaways
• New insight needed to manage complex app experience
dependencies
o Traditional operational model: Find and fix
o New operational model: Evidence and escalate
• Visibility key to managing external dependencies
• Cross correlation of DNS, app, network, and BGP provides context
for rapid fault isolation
• Collective data can enable quick validation of issues and scope
• Sharelinks can improve communication with providers
43

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