Comprehensive guide to configuration and administration of DNS servers
Covers DNS Extensions, delegation, and registration
Description
The Domain Name System is one of the foundations of the internet. It is the system that allows the translation of human-readable domain names into machines-readable IP addresses and the reverse translation of IP addresses into domain names. This book describes the basic DNS protocol and its extensions; DNS delegation and registration, including for reverse domains; using DNS servers in networks that are not connected to the internet; and using DNS servers on firewall machines. Many detailed examples are used throughout the book to show perform various configuration and administration tasks.
Who is this book for?
This book is for system administrators and network architects who need to learn how to run and configure DNS servers. A working knowledge of TCP/IP protocols is presumed.
What you will learn
This book covers all the basic as well as advanced uses of DNS
Chapter 1 introduces basic DNS concepts, such as domains and subdomains, domain naming syntax, reverse domains, zones, queries, resolvers, name servers, forwarder servers.
Chapter 2 explains the DNS protocol, focusing on DNS query. The chapter makes use of several examples of DNS client-server communication. Including an example of a non-existent RR query and its answer, communication with a root server, and TCP and UDP DNS queries.
Chapter 3 describes extension to the DNS protocol, including DNS Update, DNS Notify, Incremental Zone Transfer, Negative caching, DNS IPv6 Extension, DNSsec, and TSIG.
Chapter 4 discusses name server implementations, focusing on Bind, versions 4, 8, and 9. The use and configuration of the program named is explained in detail. The chapter also discusses the Windows 2000 implementation.
Chapter 5 covers DNS tuning and administration and tools, such as named-checkconf, named-checkzone, nslookup, dnswalk, dig, and rndc.
Chapter 6 focuses on DNS delegation from a primary to secondary servers. The process of domain registration is also explained in the chapter.
Chapter 7 talks about the delegation and registration of reverse domains.
The internet registry is the subject of Chapter 8. It covers the regional internet registry, division of the world between RIR and country codes, and RIPE database and its various objects.
Chapter 9 shows how to configure DNS servers in closed intranets, i.e. networks that are not connected to the internet. It covers configuring a root name server on a separate server (BIND 4) and configuring a name server for the root domain.
Chapter 10 covers sharing a DNS database between the Internet and intranet, as well as having separate servers. It also discusses installing name servers on firewalls.
According to the title page of this book, it is an English translationof a Czech book (ISBN 80-722-6675-6) published in 2003, apparently froma manuscript completed in 2001 (based on the dates used in theexamples).The content has not been appreciably updated, if it's been updated atall. For example, in Section 3.5.1 and 3.5.2, the book discusses AAAAand A6 resource records, noting "The use of the AAAA record will notprevail in the future, though". However, the IETF moved the A6 recordto EXPERIMENTAL status in 2001 (!), effectively deprecating it in favorof AAAA. In fact, the book is dangerously out-of-date, as it has anextensive treatment of BIND 4 without anywhere noting that theISC -- the maintainer of BIND -- deprecated BIND 4 in 1997. (BIND 4 isnow widely regarded as unsafe for use in a production environment.)The woefully dated content isn't the only problem. The translationfrom Czech is sloppy, with many typographical errors and awkwardsentences. There are many artifacts from what was presumably initiallya machine translation. There are also quite a few minor inaccuracies,and negligible coverage of security issues (other than a section on anobsoleted version DNSSEC).In short, I cannot warn strongly enough against this book. It'sinadequate, even as a primer. I would recommend one of theseimmeasurably better books on DNS for anyone at any levelseeking to learn more about DNS:- Pro DNS and BIND, by Ron Aitchison (ISBN 1590594940)- DNS and BIND (5th Edition), by Cricket Liu and Paul Albitz (ISBN 0596100574)
Amazon Verified review
John DickinsonJul 17, 2006
1
When I got this book I flicked to the section on DNSSEC in order to see how up to date this book is. I was horrified to see that the whole section is based on RFC 2535. This is now obsolete and has been replaced by RFC's 4033, 4034 and 4035. These new RFC's had been out for a year by the time this book was published.
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