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Cloudflare says a targeted build planner and new scheduler halved the time between a DNS change and its data being written to Quicksilver, while reducing peak memory use by 85%. The changes avoid rebuilding entire zones for certain setting updates, but events whose effects are unclear still trigger broader builds.
Cloudflare says it has halved the time its DNS propagation pipeline takes to write a change to Quicksilver and cut peak memory use by 85% by changing how it builds DNS zones. The company’s targeted build planner and scheduler avoid rebuilding a whole zone for some setting changes, a shift aimed at keeping the service workable as zones grow to tens of millions of records, much like optimizing Cloudflare’s DNS cache.
Cloudflare’s DNS Zone Builder turns database changes into data that the company’s authoritative DNS servers can use. It reads zone data, converts it into keys for the edge, compares those keys with the existing entries in Quicksilver, and writes changes that then propagate across Cloudflare’s network. The company says the build process’s clock measures the time from a change to the point when its data is written to Quicksilver.
In the earlier design, a setting change could prompt a full build: the builder read and processed every record in the zone even if only one setting had changed. Cloudflare says the new planner identifies the smallest build it can prove is safe, while a scheduler combines work for the same zone. According to the company, this removes the need for setting changes to trigger whole-zone builds in cases where a narrower build is sufficient.
Cloudflare reports that the changes together reduced peak memory use by 85%, echoing the focus on memory efficiency in cutting memory costs without cutting capability. It says the additional memory headroom also allowed it to shorten waits built into the pipeline for resilience, cutting the time from a DNS change to its data being written to Quicksilver by half. The supplied report does not give the absolute delay before or after the change, or specify a measurement period for either percentage.
Faster DNS Updates at Scale
The change addresses a scaling problem in a system that must turn customer and internal updates into DNS data available across a global network. Cloudflare says the Zone Builder now receives about 700 DNS record changes per second, up from roughly 250 in 2022, as well as about 100 other events, including setting changes. The company says some zones exceed 20 million records and are expected to grow further.
For customers, reducing the time to write updated data to Quicksilver could mean that DNS changes become usable by Cloudflare’s authoritative servers sooner. The reported measure is specifically the pipeline interval through the Quicksilver write; the post does not establish a universal end-to-end propagation time for every user or resolver. Lower peak memory use also gives the builder more capacity to handle large zones and lets Cloudflare reduce some safety waits without, the company says, compromising resilience.
The benefits depend on identifying what a change can affect. A planner that does too much work wastes resources, but one that does too little risks leaving stale or incorrect DNS data at the edge. Cloudflare says it designed the planner to choose less work only when it can establish that doing so is safe.
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Why Full-Zone Builds Strained
Cloudflare described an earlier optimization in a 2022 post: builds triggered by individual record changes were already faster than full-zone builds. In that account, per-record builds were 150 times faster on average; on a test zone with one million records, they were 4,250 times faster. The company said the next step was to apply the same targeted approach to zone settings.
Settings are harder to handle selectively because their effects can extend beyond a single record. Cloudflare’s example is Universal SSL: enabling or disabling it can change metadata and CAA records at the zone apex. CAA records tell certificate authorities whether they may issue certificates for a domain. Events can also affect information shared by zones with the same name, so the builder has to account for the possibility that more than one zone’s output is affected.
Cloudflare says it updated event producers to identify changed fields and settings and, where available, include their old and new values. The planner maps these changes to DNS output. But some events provide only a timestamp update or otherwise do not explain what changed. In those cases, Cloudflare says it continues to use a full build rather than risk missing an effect.
“The problem was the kind of work some of those events needed, and how that work grows with the size of a zone.”
— Cloudflare, in its blog report
Limits of the Reported Gains
The supplied report does not state the absolute build-delay figures, how the delay was measured across different zones, or the exact test period behind the 50% and 85% results. It also does not provide independent measurements or customer-level data showing how much sooner DNS changes are observed outside Cloudflare’s pipeline.
Cloudflare has not said that every zone-setting event can now use a targeted build. Events that do not identify their effects, including some timestamp-only updates, still trigger full builds. The post also says shared data and changes between the time an event is produced and the time a build runs must be handled safely; the supplied material does not detail how often those cases require broader work.
Broader Event Coverage Ahead
Cloudflare says it is still working to identify the callers and purposes behind less-specific updates. That could allow the company to distinguish harmless bookkeeping from changes that require data elsewhere to be reread. Until those event sources are understood, it says such updates will continue to prompt full builds.
The next practical milestone is broader and more reliable event detail: the company will need to trace changes through the systems that produce DNS output and verify that narrower builds account for affected records, shared metadata, and removals from Quicksilver. The report does not give a rollout schedule or a target date for that work.
Key Questions
What did Cloudflare change?
Cloudflare introduced a targeted build planner and a scheduler that combines work for the same zone. They are designed to avoid rebuilding every record when a setting change affects only a smaller part of the DNS output.
How much faster are DNS builds?
Cloudflare says the changes halved the time from a DNS change to writing its data to Quicksilver. The supplied report does not give the absolute before-and-after time or claim that every external DNS lookup reflects the change in that interval.
What does the 85% memory reduction refer to?
It refers to a reduction in peak memory use from the build changes, according to Cloudflare. The report does not provide absolute memory figures or a measurement period.
Do all setting changes now get targeted builds?
No. Cloudflare says events with unclear or missing details can still trigger full-zone builds. The planner uses narrower work only when the company can determine that it is safe.
Why are targeted builds useful for large zones?
A full build reads and processes every record, even when a change affects only a setting or a limited set of DNS data. Cloudflare says some zones exceed 20 million records, making that repeated work costly in memory and time.
Source: blog.cloudflare.com
