Anycast
Short definition
Network routing technique where many physical servers share the same IP — traffic routes to the topologically nearest one.
Anycast is a routing technique where the same IP address is announced from multiple physical locations via BGP. Internet routing chooses the topologically nearest announcement, so a request to anycast IP 1.2.3.4 from Paris hits the Paris node, while the same IP from Tokyo hits the Tokyo node. Anycast is used for DNS resolvers (1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 are anycast), CDN edges, and DDoS scrubbing.
For DDoS protection, anycast is critical because attack traffic gets distributed across the entire scrubbing network — a 400 Gbps attack hitting an anycast network with 50 PoPs becomes a manageable 8 Gbps per location. Without anycast, the entire attack hits one upstream link and saturates it. Reputable offshore hosts route DDoS-protected traffic through anycast networks (often Cloudflare or Voxility).
Connected concepts
Adjacent definitions worth knowing in the same context.
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