DNS and BIND, Fourth Edition - Softcover

Albitz, Paul; Liu, Cricket

4

698 ratings by Goodreads

9780596001582: DNS and BIND, Fourth Edition

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0596001584 ISBN 13: 9780596001582

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, 2001

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DNS and BIND is about one of the Internet's fundamental building blocks: the distributed host information database that's responsible for translating names into addresses, routing mail to its proper destination, and many other services. As the authors say in the preface, if you're using the Internet, you're already using DNS--even if you don't know it.This edition brings you up to date on the new 9.1.0 and 8.2.3 versions of BIND along with the older 4.9 version. There's also more extensive coverage of NOTIFY, IPv6 forward and reverse mapping, transaction signatures, and the new DNS Security Extensions; and a new section on accommodating Windows 2000 clients, servers and Domain Controllers.Whether you're an administrator involved daily with DNS or a user who wants to be more informed about the Internet and how it works, you'll find this book essential reading.Topics include:

What DNS does, how it works, and when you need to use it
How to find your own place in the Internet's name space
Setting up name servers
Using MX records to route mail
Configuring hosts to use DNS name servers
Subdividing domains (parenting)
Securing your name server: restricting who can query your server, preventing unauthorized zone transfers, avoiding bogus name servers, etc.
Mapping one name to several servers for load sharing
Troubleshooting: using nslookup, reading debugging output, common problems
DNS programming, using the resolver library and Perl's Net::DNS module

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Review:

The Domain Naming System (DNS) is a glorious thing. It takes familiar Internet network and machine names (like "amazon.com") and converts them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (like "208.35.218.15") that are meaningful to routers and therefore useful for identifying the machine you want to reach. What's amazing is that DNS enables someone in Germany to refer, by name, to a computer in Mongolia even if no one in Germany has ever accessed the distant machine before. It's pretty much self-configuring, too: No human effort in Germany is necessary to make the Mongolian machine reachable by name. DNS and BIND explains how DNS works better for this than any other piece of documentation, printed or otherwise. The work of Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, now in its fourth revision, has long been considered a classic among systems administrators and network architects, particularly those with a Unix bent.

The fourth edition is mainly an update: The authors have added coverage of incremental and conditional zone transfer with BIND's new NOTIFY features, as well as of Transaction Signatures (TSIG), and DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). Sections on firewalling and DNS for IPv6 addresses have been expanded. Throughout, Albitz and Liu maintain their impeccable style, combining text and illustrative listings into an educational whole. --David Wall

Topics covered: The Domain Naming System (DNS) and how it's implemented by BIND (through versions 8.2.3 and 9.1.0), how to set up BIND, how to configure MX records for mail service, parent and child domains, NOTIFY, and DNS security.

About the Author:

Paul Albitz is a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Paul earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, and a Master of Science degree from Purdue University. Paul worked on BIND for the HP-UX 7.0 and 8.0 releases. During this time Paul developed the tools used to run the hp.com domain. More recently he has been involved in networking HP's DesignJet plotter. Before joining HP, Paul was a system administrator in the CS Department of Purdue University. As system administrator, Paul ran versions of BIND before BIND's initial release with 4.3 BSD. Paul and his wife Katherine live in San Diego, CA.

Cricket Liu matriculated at the University of California's Berkeley campus, that great bastion of free speech, unencumbered Unix, and cheap pizza. He joined Hewlett-Packard after graduation and worked for HP for nine years. Cricket began managing the hp.com zone after the Loma Prieta earthquake forcibly transferred the zone's management from HP Labs to HP's Corporate Offices (by cracking a sprinkler main and flooding Labs' computer room). Cricket was hostmaster@hp.com for over three years, and then joined HP's Professional Services Organization to cofound HP's Internet Consulting Program. Cricket left HP in 1997 to form Acme Byte & Wire, a DNS consulting and training company, with his friend (and now co-author) Matt Larson. Network Solutions acquired Acme in June 2000, and later the same day merged with VeriSign. Cricket worked for a year as Director of DNS Product Management for VeriSign Global Registry Services. Cricket joined Men & Mice, an Icelandic company specializing in DNS software and services, in September, 2001. He is currently their Vice President, Research & Development. Cricket, his wife, Paige, and their son, Walt, live in Colorado with two Siberian Huskies, Annie and Dakota. On warm weekend afternoons, you'll probably find them on the flying trapeze or wakeboarding behind Betty Blue.

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