BIND is an open source software suite provided by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). LoadMaster and LoadMaster GEO have been updated to version 9.16.24. BIND 9.16 is the current “Stable/ESV version”, according to the ISC website.

Alongside this update, GEO has been enhanced with Extended DNS (EDNS) Client Subnet, or ECS, support. This is a new global option on the GSLB Miscellaneous Params page, which is disabled by default on upgrade and enabled by default on a fresh install. With this feature enabled, GEO will be able to provide better greographic location determination over previous releases.

The ECS feature leverages the larger EDNS packet size and the Client Subnet field that can be set by the client making the DNS request. When a DNS query arrives with an ECS value set, that value will be used as the client location for all DNS operations, with the exception of deny lists. If there is no ECS information in the query (i.e., it was either never supplied by the client or was stripped out by an intervening DNS server that doesn’t support EDNS), GEO will behave as in previous releases.