Website · Documentation · Pricing
Overview
IBM NS1 Connect is a managed authoritative DNS and traffic-steering service. It directs users across data centers, cloud regions and CDNs; those destinations deliver the content.
- DNS: managed primary and secondary DNS with DNSSEC.
- Steering: Filter Chains combine policies and endpoint-health signals.
- Automation: APIs and infrastructure-as-code integrations.
IBM completed its acquisition of NS1 in the first quarter of 2023. This listing covers the current IBM product rather than assigning the parent company’s founding date or headquarters to the service.
Network
IBM publishes twenty-six global anycast DNS PoP cities across six continents. The map shows the published DNS city list at approximate centers, not CDN cache facilities. One unresolved city is listed without a marker.
Mainland China uses a separate unicast DNS network. Check the connected CDNs and origin paths separately when planning content delivery.
Approximate city centers of authoritative DNS nodes, not content caches. Separate China unicast network is excluded.
Cities
New York City, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, Toronto, Bogotá, São Paulo, London, Paris, Marseille, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bucharest, Helsinki, Chennai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Johannesburg
Listed without a marker: Ashburn.
Features
DNS and steering
Filter Chains apply routing policies to DNS answers. Health checks and data feeds inform those decisions; optional Pulsar uses real-user measurements. Recursive resolver caching and DNS TTLs still affect when clients see a changed answer.
DNS DDoS resilience protects the authoritative service. It is separate from HTTP WAF, bot controls and delivery protection supplied by the chosen CDN or origin. DNSSEC protects DNS-answer integrity, not application traffic.
Operations and add-ons
The platform supports zone versioning, account permissions, activity logs and HTTP/HTTPS redirects. Cloud Sync, dedicated DNS, DNS Insights and mainland-China DNS are separately scoped offerings. Check availability on your plan and any extra fees.
Configure caching, purges, media processing, image transformations and edge functions on the connected delivery services.
Pricing
| DNS plan | Published starting monthly price |
|---|---|
| Essentials | USD 108 |
| Standard | USD 349 |
| Premium | Custom quote |
Essentials starts with 30 million monthly DNS queries, 1,000 records, two health checks and one Filter Chain. Standard starts with 50 million queries and similar baseline resources, with larger allowances available. A thirty-day trial is listed. Prices vary by locale, taxes and selected quantities; temporary promotions are not the base tariff.
Pulsar Multi-CDN steering and other add-ons have separate terms. DNS queries are not equivalent to HTTP requests: resolver caching changes the count.
Use the CDN calculator for the connected delivery networks and add the confirmed DNS subscription/add-on bill as a monthly extra. Do not enter the DNS-query rate as a CDN-request rate.
Developer tools
- Automate zones, records and steering with the documented APIs, Terraform or Ansible.
- Feed availability and performance signals from integrations such as Datadog, Catchpoint, CloudWatch and ThousandEyes.
- Use Go/Python clients or Kubernetes DNS and certificate integrations where applicable.
- Evaluate Cloud Sync for supported DNS synchronization with Amazon Route 53.
The chosen CDNs retain separate cache, purge, origin and delivery-log configuration. During a migration, test delegation, DNSSEC, TTLs, certificates and routing behavior before switching traffic.
When it fits
- Teams steering between several CDNs, clouds or application endpoints.
- Operations able to separate DNS decisions from delivery configuration and performance.
- Environments needing DNS automation, health checks and optional real-user routing signals.
Before you choose
- NS1 routes DNS; you still need CDNs to cache and serve content and protect HTTP requests.
- Budget DNS queries and steering add-ons separately from CDN requests.
- Allow for TTLs and resolver caches when planning failover.
Sources
- www.ibm.com/products/ns1-connect/features
- www.ibm.com/docs/en/ns1-connect
- www.ibm.com/products/ns1-connect/pricing
- newsroom.ibm.com/IBM-Plans-to-Acquire-NS1-to-Help-Enterprises-Drive-Network-Agility-in-their-Hybrid-Cloud-Environments
- www.ibm.com/products/ns1-connect
- www.ibm.com/products/ns1-connect/integrations
- community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/yanju-folarin/2025/05/09/anycast-dns-network
- www.ibm.com/investor/att/pdf/IBM_1Q_2023_10-Q.pdf
- www.naturalearthdata.com/
- aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
- cloud.google.com/storage/pricing
