Aga Khan freed from BIND bind

ApplianSys is pleased to announce that Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi, Pakistan, has deployed DNSBOX to replace its ageing DNS solution and ensure a reliable and secure DNS service.

AKU previously used 2 BIND-based Linux servers to handle external DNS requests for over 6,000 internet users across its 84-acre campus.

But with constant maintenance required, these servers were already difficult to manage.  And as traffic on AKU’s network grew, reliability also became a big concern.

The servers were often overwhelmed by the sheer number of requests, frequently becoming overloaded. As a result, they needed to be rebooted many times a week, during which students and staff at the university experienced very slow internet – or in some cases no access at all.

It was clear to Technology Director Ahsan Tasneem the university had outgrown its BIND solution, and he sought alternative solutions.

When Ahsan was at AKU’s Tajikistan campus, he worked with ApplianSys’ CACHEBOX product, and had been convinced by the reliability of their solutions.  “A short product demo made it clear DNSBOX was designed with dedicated services for high performance,” he comments, “A bonus was that DNSBOX was only a fraction of the cost of alternative DDI solutions with the same functionality.”

Having deployed a pair of DNSBOX200 servers, the university’s DNS is much easier to manage, and service reliability has significantly improved.

“By using UNBOUND to handle recursive DNS requests, DNSBOX200 provides more than twice the performance AKU previously had with BIND.  And its intuitive interface means that AKU’s tech team no longer spend hours each week on server maintenance,” says DNSBOX Consultant Harminder Heer.

About
Established in 1983, The Aga Khan University (AKU) is an international university, operating on campuses in Central and South Asia, the African Great Lakes, Europe and the Middle East.

In Karachi, Pakistan, the university comprises an 84-acre campus including a hospital.  It caters for ~ 2,500 students and is one of the few universities in Pakistan to provide research facilities to undergraduate level students.