# NS1, an IBM Company

> NS1, acquired by IBM in 2023, provides managed authoritative DNS and programmable traffic steering. Its IBM NS1 Connect service helps engineering teams route users across application endpoints, clouds and content delivery networks using availability, performance and business policies.

- **Founded:** 2013
- **Headquarters:** New York, United States
- **Founders:** Kris Beevers (Co-founder and founding CEO), Jonathan Sullivan (Co-founder and founding CTO), Alex Vayl (Co-founder; historical Chief of Staff)
- **Products:** IBM NS1 Connect, Pulsar / RUM traffic steering, Dedicated DNS, DNS Insights, DNS for China
- **Notable:** Founded in 2013; acquired by IBM in 2023., IBM-branded NS1 Connect launched in October 2023., IBM reports a global anycast network with 26+ points of presence across six continents.

## Products & services

- **IBM NS1 Connect** — Managed authoritative DNS with API automation, health monitoring, Filter Chain traffic steering, DNSSEC and DDoS protection; IBM-branded launch in October 2023.
- **Pulsar / RUM traffic steering** — Uses real-user performance measurements to select paths across cloud, application or CDN endpoints; available as a Premium add-on.
- **Dedicated DNS** — An additional single-tenant DNS infrastructure layer for isolation and redundancy.
- **DNS Insights** — Paid DNS analytics and observability add-on for investigating traffic, anomalies and configuration problems.
- **DNS for China** — Managed DNS network designed for performance and reliability in mainland China.
- **Cloud Sync** — Managed synchronization of supported DNS configurations between IBM NS1 Connect and Amazon Route 53.
- **NS1 Connect Essentials** — SMB subscription introduced in June 2024; currently starts at USD 99 per month.

## Achievements

- Founded in 2013; acquired by IBM in 2023.
- IBM-branded NS1 Connect launched in October 2023.
- IBM reports a global anycast network with 26+ points of presence across six continents.
- IBM’s Dropbox case study reports 10-15% latency improvements at the 75th and 95th percentiles and reductions of up to 200 milliseconds for long-tail users.
- Netlify case study reports 99.99% achieved uptime; the 60 million apps and 12 million developers refer to Netlify’s platform scale.
- A 100% uptime SLA applies to the managed DNS service, subject to contractual terms.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — October 2 IBM Community post describes a 30-day trial including Cloud Sync, 50 million queries, 500 records, 20 monitors and 10 Filter Chains.
- **2026-09** — September 8 IBM Community lab walkthrough connects Instana alerts and live load metrics to NS1 traffic steering; this is an implementation example.
- **2025-08** — IBM Community describes work with GlobalDots on DNS policies to reduce unwanted bot traffic for an unnamed European organization.

## Links

- Website: https://www.ibm.com/products/ns1-connect
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ns1/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ns1
- GitHub: https://github.com/ns1

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Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-03