DNS and BIND

By Cricket Liu, Paul Albitz
January 1900
Pages: 418
ISBN 10: 1-56592-010-4 | ISBN 13: 9781565920101
(Average of 1 Customer Reviews)

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Description

DNS and BIND contains all you need to know about the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) and the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND), its UNIX implementation. The Domain Name System is the Internet's "phone book"; it's a database that tracks important information (in particular, names and addresses) for every computer on the Internet. If you're a system administrator, this book will show you how to set up and maintain the DNS software on your network.
Full Description

Here's a complete guide to the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) and the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) software, the UNIX implementation of DNS. DNS is the system that translates hostnames into Internet addresses. 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, 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: 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 trouble-shooting; and programming. Assumes a basic knowledge of system administration and network management. Contents include:

Background.
How DNS works.
Where to start.
Setting up BIND.
DNS and electronic mail.
Maintaining BIND.
Configuring hosts.
Planning a domain.
Parenting.
Nslookup.
Reading BIND debugging output.
Troubleshooting DNS and BIND.
Programming with the resolver library routines.

Featured customer reviews

Outdated, but does DNS change all that much?, March 18 2007

Rating:

Submitted by garyamort [Respond | View]

Very good to cover the basics. I expect the latest book would cover new technologies, but DNS at it's roots hasn't changes and whenever I run into some weird settings on older servers, this book is a handy reference to get it fixed quickly.

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Media reviews "DNS and BIND is a friendly, informative introduction and reference to these two tools for manaaging Internet domain names. DNS (Domain Name System) is a distributed replacement for /etc/hosts that allows machines to look up IP numbers from domain-based names. BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is the most popular set of DNS software. DNS and BIND will be helpful to administrators, programmers, and adventurous users. More generally, it is a field guide to Internet names, tools, and resources."

--Richard Morin, Unix Review, August 1993

"Of the millions of users on the Internet, almost all are blissfully unaware of the complexity and magnitude of the task of network routing. How does the network know where to deliver a piece of email? In fact, given the packet nature of all Internet traffic, how do telnet or ftp packets get, reliably and generally quickly, to their destination? Few even recognize the term DNS, the Domain Name Service, which handles the problem. Administrators may have used BIND, the Berkeley Internet Name Domain program, to manage DNS, but may not fully understand the imnportance, use or finer aspects of it. This book gives both background and operational details.

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