Round-robin DNS puts multiple IPv4 or IPv6 addresses behind one hostname and varies their order in DNS replies. It can spread traffic when clients tend to try the first address they receive, but it does not guarantee balanced load or automatically stop sending clients to a failed server.
What round-robin DNS means
Round-robin DNS is a way to publish several addresses for a single hostname. An operator configures multiple A records for IPv4 addresses, AAAA records for IPv6 addresses, or both. The authoritative DNS server varies the order of those addresses across answers.
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RFC 9726 calls it “the very common mechanism that returns DNS A (or reasonably AAAA) records in a permuted order” (RFC 9726). The rotation happens in DNS responses; it is not a scheduler that watches each live connection or request.
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If a client tends to use the first address in a DNS answer, varying the order can lead different clients to contact different servers. But the DNS answer is only one part of the path: recursive resolvers can cache it and share it with many clients, and clients may choose or reorder addresses themselves. The number of DNS lookups therefore does not translate directly into an equal number of connections or an even share of work.
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As RFC 1794 puts it, “the DNS protocol doesn’t guarantee ordering” (RFC 1794). Round-robin is a lightweight distribution technique, not a promise of equal load.
Why it is not automatic failover
Basic round-robin records do not establish whether a server is healthy. If a failed server’s address remains configured, DNS may continue returning it, and clients may still try to connect to it. Removing or avoiding unhealthy targets requires health-aware routing or another health-checking layer.
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Provider features differ. Cloudflare documents a load-balancing add-on with health checks, automatic failover, and more routing control; its behavior also depends on whether traffic is proxied. With unproxied records, clients receive the configured A-record addresses and choose which to contact. With proxied records, clients receive Cloudflare IP addresses, and Cloudflare may select among configured origin addresses (Cloudflare’s round-robin DNS documentation).
How caching and TTL affect changes
Changing or removing an address at the authoritative DNS server does not instantly update every client. Recursive resolvers cache answers according to their TTLs, so clients may continue to receive an older address set while cached data remains valid. A lower TTL can shorten the period during which stale answers are served, but it cannot make all resolvers and clients behave identically or end connections that are already in progress. RFC 1794 discusses the relationship between TTL and how quickly DNS data or its ordering is expected to change; RFC 9726 also describes cached answers persisting while DNS data changes.
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If you need more than address rotation, compare the actual capabilities of the DNS or load-balancing service you plan to use. Relevant questions include:
- Health checks: Can the system detect unhealthy targets and stop returning or selecting them?
- Traffic controls: Can you assign weights or route by geography?
- Address selection: Does the client receive all configured addresses, or does a service select a target first?
- Selection point: Does routing happen when DNS is queried, or later at a proxy or load balancer that handles requests?
- Cache behavior: How do TTLs and cached answers affect a change or failover?
These features are provider-specific. For example, Google Cloud DNS documents health-checked routing policies, including weighted and geolocation options. Its external-endpoint health-check intervals are configurable from 30 to 300 seconds; that is a Google Cloud setting, not a general DNS standard (Google Cloud DNS routing policies).
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