Dns and Bind
by Cricket Liu, Paul Albitz, Mike Loukides

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Book Reviews of Dns and Bind

Book Review: Good but dated...
Summary: 4 Stars

Summary of Dns and Bind

DNS is the system that translates hostnames (like "rock.ora.com") into Internet addresses (like 192.54.67.23). Until BIND was developed, name translation was based on a "host table"; if you were on the Internet, you got a table that listed all the systems connected to the Net and their addresses. As the Internet grew from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of systems, host tables became unworkable. DNS is a distributed database that solves the same problem effectively, allowing the Net to grow without constraints. Rather than having a central table that gets distributed to every system on the Net, it allows local administrators to assign their own hostnames and addresses and install these names in a local database. This database is automatically distributed to other systems as names are needed.

In addition to covering the basic motivation behind DNS and how to set up the BIND software, this book covers many more advanced topics, including using DNS and BIND on Windows NT systems; how to become a "parent" (i.e., "delegate" the ability to assign names to someone else); how to use DNS to set up mail forwarding correctly; debugging and troubleshooting; and programming. Assumes a basic knowledge of system administration and network management.

This book's early chapters give a view of DNS from high altitude, explaining basic concepts such as domains, name servers, and name resolution. From there, the authors proceed on a more practical tack, presenting specific instructions for setting up your own domain and DNS server using BIND. The authors then tell you what to do as your domain grows and you need to add more machines, subdomains, and greater throughput capacity. They also talk a lot about nslookup and C programming with the various DNS and BIND libraries. Administrators will find the chapter on BIND debugging output particularly helpful. Here, the authors translate BIND's mysterious error messages and offer specific strategies for fixing and optimizing the program. This edition covers BIND 8.1.2, but pays lots of attention to older versions that are still in wide use (4.8.3 and 4.9). The authors are careful to note differences among the versions. --David Wall

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