> I have no idea what is involved in running [a recursive name server] > having never configured/setup one before. Would it consume lots of > harddrive realestate? Consume lots of swap or RAM?
This is on a server that is recursive for a small user community (2 to 10 users, depending on the time of day), and authoritative for a small network (a dozen machines). $ ps -ubind lw F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND 1 103 2728 1 18 0 31100 3884 rt_sig Ssl ? 0:10 /usr/sbin/named -u bind FWIW, this machine is a 600 MHz Pentium III with 128 MB RAM, and it serves as a name server, a firewall (for both IPv4 and IPv6), a router (using two different routing protocols, over both IPv4 and IPv6), and a VPN endpoint for 6 tunnels. I've never seen it swap. It's running a heavily customised version of Debian, which makes it lighter than whatever you'll be able to achieve with proprietary software. Still, it makes my point -- building your own network infrastructure is cheap. Juliusz