Domain Name Service (DNS) Solution

The BBC is seeking to procure an Internet-facing authoritative DNS (Domain Name Service) solution. The purpose of this solution is to ensure BBC Online and related services continue to remain available in the UK across the globe.

Due to the critical nature of this service to the BBC’s online presence, it is essential the BBC has direct access to the technical and operational teams responsible for providing the DNS services. To ensure service continuity and the necessary level of technical expertise, the BBC will not accept tender submissions from third parties, such as resellers. The BBC will instead only accept submissions from DNS infrastructure providers capable of delivering the service directly.

Currently, the high availability design of BBC Online relies heavily on DNS for load balancing across different service architectures, failover responses in the event of service problems, and ensuring the best possible audience experience by routing clients to the most appropriate services that can respond to their requests.

The solution will aim to provide:

1. The necessary DNS resolution capacity to satisfy current global query levels, and to withstand large-scale DDoS attacks against DNS without affecting availability or performance

2. Increased resilience to global DNS network failure or service problems by provision of two logically and physically separated DNS resolver networks.

3. Increased resilience to volumetric DDoS attacks by including additional network edge intelligence such as IP reputation data in the dynamic configurations.

4. Increased service analytics & insights into DNS usage to inform operational monitoring and business reporting.