4 April, 2023
by Mark Teisman
With anycast you can have multiple servers bound to the same IP address. When one (client) IP address sends a request to another IP address, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is used to determine which server bound to that IP address is closest (in terms of # hops, cost, latencies). The internet packets are routed to that server. Anycast is used to power CDNs, help mitigate DDOS attacks, and are often used for DNS servers (e.g. Google's DNS server 8.8.8.8 is powered by dozens of servers).