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[SITUATION] · [QUIET] · [TECHNOLOGY]

2 clusters · 10 sources · 4 days · First seen · Last updated

Cloudflare DNS cache memory optimization

Overview

Cloudflare has reclaimed approximately 100 terabytes of memory across its global infrastructure by optimizing the DNS cache for its Big Pineapple platform. This platform manages over 250 billion DNS cache entries, supporting services such as the 1.1.1.1 public resolver, DNS Firewall, Gateway DNS, and AS112.

Through five specific low-level code optimizations implemented in the Rust programming language, the company reduced the memory footprint of individual entries from 953 bytes to 420 bytes. Technical refinements included replacing growable containers with fixed-size structures to eliminate unused capacity, consolidating DNS response sections into a single buffer, and removing redundant domain name storage. These changes alone saved over 15 TB of RAM.

In addition to the memory savings, the optimizations improved system performance, resulting in a 43% increase in insert throughput and a 19% reduction in lookup latency.

Entities

Big Pineapple · Cloudflare · 1.1.1.1 · Rust

Timeline

  1. 11 days ago

    [TECHNOLOGY] 2 sources
    Cloudflare reclaims 100 TB of RAM via DNS cache optimization

    Cloudflare reclaimed 100 TB of RAM by optimizing its Big Pineapple DNS platform, reducing individual DNS entry sizes from 953 to 420 bytes through Rust code refinements.

  2. 15 days ago

    [TECHNOLOGY] 7 sources
    Cloudflare reclaims 100TB of memory via DNS cache optimization

    Cloudflare freed 100TB of RAM by optimizing its 1.1.1.1 DNS cache. Using Rust-level structural changes, it reduced per-entry memory usage by 56% while increasing throughput and reducing latency.

Sources

blogspan.net · cybernoz.com · gamemag.it · gigazine.net · ithome.com · monitor.si · techplanet.today · techspot.com · tomshardware.com · unwire.hk