[wcip]

What about the failure rate of all the DNS servers? It's not like someone set up a Windows Server box and we all share it. Google's DNS server at 8.8.8.8 for example uses some sort of complex multihoming/multicast setup and is globally distributed. I trust DNS to work more than any other service on the internet. It's a triumph of software engineering. The Roman aqueduct of the internet.

[waste_monk]

AFAIK they use Anycast for the multihoming [0] - It follows the normal routing process, but the anycasted network is announced from multiple sites instead of just one.

AFAIK Google have ~19 data centres, and DNS / 8.8.8.8 is probably being served from all or most of them. So it is indeed very reliable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast