question on DNS and "back-up servers"

[Dinah]

Hello,

Not knowing a lot about server-side protocol, I thought I'd run this idea
past the web design community for feedback. Thanks for any pointers you can
offer.

I run a fairly busy website that shares server space with many other sites.
I thought what might be a good idea to prevent customer pages from not
loading due to time-waits during busy periods was this:

buy a 2nd cheap hosting plan somewhere for the same domain name, and enter
the new hosting plan's DNS as a 3rd and 4th DNS in my domain registrar
control panel.

My logic is this: if the primary and seconday DNS addresses are "busy" or
"unavailable" due to heavy traffic at my primary host's server, then traffic
will be re-directed to the 2nd hosting plan at DNS 3 & 4.

Is this "workable logic"?

Is this how internet traffic is actually routed?

thanks for any insights from server-side gurus..

Dinah

 

[Jan Faerber]

Dinah ... output:

Hello,
Hi!

Not knowing a lot about server-side protocol, I thought I'd run this idea
past the web design community for feedback. Thanks for any pointers you
can offer.

I run a fairly busy website that shares server space with many other
sites. I thought what might be a good idea to prevent customer pages from
not loading due to time-waits during busy periods was this:

buy a 2nd cheap hosting plan somewhere for the same domain name, and enter
the new hosting plan's DNS as a 3rd and 4th DNS in my domain registrar
control panel.

As far as I know one DNS name of a webpage e.g. dinah.com can have only one
IP adress which the registrar must know. There is a root DNS server.
Someone wants to visit dinah.com and his browser asks the root DNS server
for the DNS Server of dinah.com. The root DNS server tells his browser "The
DNS Server of dinah.com is firstly in the TLD .com and then in the local
DNS server's domain e.g. dinah.com." The name of the local DNS server can
have any other name aswell. And then the local DNS server will be asked for
the IP adress of the webpage dinah.com e.g. 64.180.160.241 and the page
will be loaded in the browser.

My logic is this: if the primary and seconday DNS addresses are "busy" or
"unavailable" due to heavy traffic at my primary host's server, then
traffic will be re-directed to the 2nd hosting plan at DNS 3 & 4.

Is this "workable logic"?

Is this how internet traffic is actually routed?

I think you mix up two different things: The DNS name of the webpage is not
the name of the DNS server. The DNS server is hosted by your provider or by
yourself or the primary DNS server is hosted by you and the secondary DNS
server is hosted by your provider or both are hosted by yourself. - The
other thing is that the entries of the DNS servers must know which hosts
map to which IP adresses. So the registrar must know your DNS servers
either you use the DNS servers of your provider or whatever. You need to
have a primary and a secondary DNS server (I found a tertiary DNS server
field aswell on my RH). But I don't think that the DNS servers may cause
long waiting times for the visitors.