>I've been asked to set up two new servers as primary and secondary >DNS servers for the 30 or so mail domains hosted on our Imail server >and the web domains on our www server. Up until now we've used our >ISP's DNS servers but for various reasons we'll be hosting our own >now. I realize DNS servers are slightly off the main topic of Imail hardly off-topic since Imail won't work without corret DNS settings. See the DNS pb's in this list today and the big effort Ipswitch makes in their doc about DNS. >issues but am hoping someone knowledgeable here could point me >towards answers to a couple of questions. >I have configured the DNS servers, created the appropriate zones and >mx records and tested it on our LAN where it works fine. The step I'm > >a bit fuzzy about is making these hosts so that they can be >registered as the authorative DNS servers for these domains on the >internet. see here: http://bind8nt.meiway.com/publicDNS.cfm >Here is my first question: >Are there rules governing the relationship between the official >(internet) name of the dns server - and the actual name of the >machine hosting the DNS server. have to be identical. otherwise, you create a situation called "lame delegation" which causes DNS traffic and wasted time and lookups. correct delegation means: 1. DNS HOST + ip are registered and present as glue records in the root-servers.net. Only one officia (DNS) HOST per ip address is allowed by internic and by the registrars. 2. domain records in root-servers.net list only DNS's from the above HOST's. 3. the SOA and NS records in the local zone file list exactly (not more, not less) the same NS's listed in the "delegation data" for the domain (ie, the NS records) in the domain's root-server.net records. >In other words, could I register a >dns server using randomly any of the domain names we are hosting yes > - >e.g. ns1.domain4.org - have it running on a machine called >server14.local no, a "registered HOST" in the root-servers.net has two official values: the hostname and the ip address. You can't get sloppy and/or creative locally with either. Register your HOST + ip, have your registrar get it into the roots, and leave it alone. >- as long as the IP I give to Network Solutions is a valid one for >that machine? you can have multple hostnames for one ip address (aka host aliases, just like in Imail). You can only have one "registered" (DNS) host per ip address. You can't have two since the registrars are supposed to reject duplicates at HOST registration time. >Secondly: >I remember from Windows NT that after creating a new zone for a >domain I would choose a-record and then an mx record for mail to >distringuish it is mail pointer. On the windows 2000 server there are >no options for mx or a records, just aliases as in mail, www etc. Has >the whole process thereby been simplified or am I missing a step if I >am going to be doing live dns for the internet. You can, obviously and RFC-compatibly and basically, set up A and MX records in W2K DNS, just go do your homework, RTFM. MS's MMC GUI makes it very simple, right? vbg btw, all reports to me indicate that BIND8 for NT4 appears to work fine on W2K. btw, it seems that ISP's don't really need MS AD, so I suggest not turning it on, since it's just one more thing to feed and care for and it gets kinda bolshy pestering your DNS's with queries and updates and harassments. btw, use the Win32 command line dig on my site's resources page for DNS work, not nslookup, and esp not MS's old nslookup. btw, get your upstream to delegate reverse zone authority to your DNS. Len Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
