Meet the Internet’s Traffic Guard

You don’t have an NS1 app on your phone or Smart TV, but the company is powering many of the apps that are.

Behind more than “half the apps on your phone,” according to Distinguished Engineer James Royalty, NS1’s application traffic intelligence and automation solutions ensure your apps work when you want them to, regardless of location or device.

Its solutions aim to modernize the deployment and delivery of network and online services that have been around since the internet’s inception, such as DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and traffic management.

Domain name system, dynamic host configuration protocol and IP address management are the internet roads that your local forecast travels to get to your device when you open a weather app. The three operate in the background, pushing the information exchange. 

 

To keep up with changing audience locations, the deployment and delivery of applications need to change as well.” 

NS1, like a traffic guard, functions to keep all of that information moving without interruption to ensure a smooth delivery of that weather forecast to millions of users on all of their devices.

“The code we’re writing is fundamental to how traffic on the internet is flowing,” said Royalty. 

But with the variety of devices being used plus the global distribution of users, remote workers, distributed networks and more, connecting applications to audiences has grown increasingly difficult, said Sanjay Ramnath, VP of product management and product marketing

“Where the audience ‘is’ continues to evolve rapidly,” Ramnath said. “To keep up with changing audience locations, the deployment and delivery of applications need to change as well.” 

Otherwise, user experiences are at risk. 

Here’s how NS1 is helping more than 760 customers, such as LinkedIn, Dropbox and Salesforce, through its software application traffic intelligence and automation solutions and what it’s like to escort billions of data points across the internet’s traffic flow.  

What problems do distributed application environments and audiences pose for your clients?

Sanjay Ramnath, VP, Product Management and Product Marketing: In the old world, an organization would deploy all of its applications on a data center, a set of hardware deployed in one system. Companies would have complete control over it because it’s in a closed system. But in today’s world, applications are deployed in old legacy data centers and have moved to the cloud or multiple clouds, like AWS, Google and Azure. Even the application architectures are changing, from monolithic entities to broken-up microservices. This forms a three-dimensional problem of audiences and applications on the move simultaneously. As companies look to deploy and scale their applications in hybrid environments, these moving pieces make it difficult to uphold control, security, performance, availability and resiliency. 

James Royalty, Distinguished Engineer: It’s very difficult to move onto new systems, be it an additional database or a cloud, unless companies have architected their network infrastructure from the beginning to do this. It gets even more complicated as companies go from one cloud to scaling it up to multiple clouds, which we’re seeing more of today. Every new network layer introduces more risks. 
 

How is NS1 addressing those problems in new ways?

Ramnath: To solve these problems, companies have to assemble a solution from a bag of parts in order to cover cloud native services, on-premises environments, application delivery and more. What NS1 is doing is building a cloud-based platform that consolidates these technologies, which differentiates ourselves from the legacy technologies in our space that require hardware directly in their network. We also built our solutions on an API-first stack with comprehensive integrations so network administrators can automate most tasks and easily incorporate our solutions into their technology stacks. A third big component is by offering a common framework and uniform experience to scale both internal and external applications. 
 

 
Your platform encourages innovation around application development and deployment for your clients. How does NS1 embrace innovation internally?

Lorraine Heber-Brause, VP and Global Head of People: In terms of values, we approach our work to drive innovation and take risks by aiming to hire the most diverse population of talent that we can access. What we mean by diversity is the full spectrum of gender, ethnicity, thought, experience and geography. At the onset of COVID-19, we broadened our geography across the U.S. in terms of where we’ve hired people. We’ve gone from predominantly hiring in New Hampshire, New York and California to now having employees in Tennessee, Michigan, Seattle, Wisconsin and Texas. That’s increased our access to a talent pool that we would have never had never been able to attract previously. It’s diversified our team, which in turn, drives engagement, belonging and innovation.

As a company, we’re also very flat. Innovation is encouraged through accessibility, and we are both accessible and hands on. This creates a dynamic that allows our team to engage in conversation and an exploration of ideas that you wouldn’t have at a larger, more hierarchical company. 
 
 

Tell us more about how NS1 is a flat organization. Is there an example you can share?

Ramnath: I hired a technical marketing director this past winter. Within weeks of him joining we had a company all-hands meeting. Our CEO asked that our new director present at it because he had some great ideas that could deliver a lot of value for our organization. There was no hesitation, and it ended up being a really positive experience for our new hire. It’s not often you get the opportunity to be pinged by the CEO and partner together on a presentation within a few weeks of joining. NS1 has an extremely open, inclusive and flat culture. If you have an idea, you’ll be heard. 
 

NS1 has an extremely open, inclusive and flat culture. If you have an idea, you’ll be heard.”  

What makes this line of work fulfilling? 

Royalty: One of the reasons I came to NS1 six years ago was because I understood the customer. I felt empathy for them, and I felt that I could engineer and architect solutions that would benefit them. It’s easier and more fulfilling work when you know the difference it makes on customers. Plus, the engineering challenges are on a global scale and it’s always fun to solve for low latency services while processing huge amounts of data. The code you’re writing is fundamental to how traffic on the internet is flowing. 

Heber-Brause: What matters most to me is an inclusive community built on teamwork, a great product and challenging work. NS1 is at the intersection of these three dynamics, making it a great destination for talent who are energized by passion, determination and companywide pride.