[lug] DNS and a thanks for the DSL info.

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Sun, Aug 27, 2000 at 02:59:11PM -0400, John Starkey wrote:
>So can I get my forward in the loop?? I'm not sure where I'll need the

Your forward is found by the domain name servers listed in your whois
record.  All the name servers listed there should agree and respond
with the appropriate record(s).  If you're having weird DNS problems,
the first thing to do is check that all the DNS servers listed in whois
for that domain, agree on the resolution of various hosts.

>reverse. I guess if my domain resolves at register.com then I'll need the

Reverse is mostly needed these days for paranoid hosts (anything with a service
you want to access runing under tcp-wrappers set to "PARANOID") and IRC
(some IRC servers are very anal about various things like forward/reverse
DNS and identd).

Reverse is only used when somone is trying to find out a host name
associated with an IP address.  Typicly, that would be when you make
an outbound connection, because that's all the remote host would have
is your IP.  It really isn't used when somone is trying to connect TO
that host -- they'd either already have the IP address and could connect,
or they'd have the host name and would have to turn it into an IP.
Reverse isn't involved in either of those cases.

>example: the domain in question is advancecreations.com. register.com gets
>the query advancecreations.com and it resolves to 24.15.40.242. (an @home

Register.com is a DNS registration service, they don't actually get queried
for DNS information.  Basicly, you are paying register.com to submit your
domain/DNS server information to the InterNIC.  If I ask for the IP associated
for www.advancecreations.com, I'll end up asking one of the root name
servers (effectively the InterNIC) what DNS servers serve that domain.
Then it would go off and ask those servers for the address of "www".

>names and the, www, ftp, etc. CNAMES to go crusading to the DNS world??
>It's easy at register.com, but I have no clue how to get DNS servers to
>query my machine. Is there anyway I can break them as long as my syntax is

Again, the DNS servers listed in the "whois" record for your domain are
the ones that will be queried for information.

>Which can safely be handled by USWest. And I won't have to contact them
>everytime I register a name?

No, probably not.  Not unless you want an IP set up with reverse for that
domain (for reasons I mentioned above -- basicly connecting out).

Sean
-- 
 Q:  What kind of dog goes "BOFH!  BOFH!"?
 A:  A rootweiler
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python