Netlify becomes faster depending on root domain and subdomain assignment

Tadashi Shigeoka ·  Thu, June 11, 2020

I’ll introduce the story that Netlify becomes faster when using Netlify DNS for root domains, and using subdomain assignments for everything else.

Netlify

Background: I was researching how to assign custom domains to Netlify

While researching how to assign custom domains to Netlify, I came across the article:

ApexドメインをALIASレコードで運用してはいけない - 週休7日で働きたい

Becomes faster depending on whether Geo-targeting can be utilized

Netlify DNS makes root domains fast too

Using Netlify DNS allows you to enable Geo-targeting even for root domains, so CDN can be utilized and performance improves.

Registering subdomains makes CDN effective and faster

Root domains (Apex domains, Naked domains) require using ALIAS records for configuration, and since the nameserver being used is intermediated during DNS queries, Netlify cannot determine which region site visitors are accessing from, making Geo-targeting unusable.

For the above reason, with subdomains like www., CNAME records can be used, so Geo-targeting becomes effective and performance improves.

That’s all from the Gemba, where I learned that Netlify can become faster with root domains or subdomains depending on the nameserver used.