DNS & Bind
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Overview
DNS and BIND tells you everything you need to work with 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 even listing phone numbers with the new ENUM standard. This book brings you up-to-date with the latest changes in this crucial service.
The fifth edition covers BIND 9.3.2, the most recent release of the BIND 9 series, as well as BIND 8.4.7. BIND 9.3.2 contains further improvements in security and IPv6 support, and important new features such as internationalized domain names, ENUM (electronic numbering), and SPF (the Sender Policy Framework).
Whether you're an administrator involved with DNS on a daily basis or a user who wants to be more informed about the Internet and how it works, you'll find that this book is 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 namespace
- 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 servers, etc.
- The DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and Transaction Signatures (TSIG)
- Mapping one name to several servers for load sharing
- Dynamic updates, asynchronous notification of change to a zone, and incremental zone transfers
- Troubleshooting: using nslookup and dig, reading debugging output, common problems
- DNS programming using the resolver library and Perl's Net::DNS module
Distributed host information databases are responsible for translating names into addresses, routing mail to its proper destination, and many other services. This edition brings readers up to date on the new 9.3 version of BIND.
Synopsis
Distributed host information databases are responsible for translating names into addresses, routing mail to its proper destination, and many other services. This edition brings readers up to date on the new 9.3 version of BIND.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewFor a technology so crucial, DNS has been sadly underdocumented. Ditto for BIND, long the most popular implementation of the DNS specifications. Web administrators hand down their secrets like treasured family heirlooms, or they reinvent the wheel over and over again, decade after decade. Or they get DNS and BIND. If ever a book filled a need, it’s this one.
Which brings us to the new Fifth Edition. You might figure DNS and BIND were thoroughly mature by now. What more can be said about using them effectively? Plenty.
First, this edition’s been updated to reflect the new 9.3.2 and 8.4.7 versions of BIND. Don’t worry if your distribution hasn’t upgraded yet -- the coverage you need is still here.
So is all-new coverage of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for identifying and rejecting forged email. So are new discussions of advanced features ranging from signed dynamic updates to IPv6 forward and reverse mapping. The book’s security chapter has been updated with coverage of transaction signatures; expanded discussions of firewalls and securing nameservers; and the latest on DNS Security Extensions. There’s revised coverage of making BIND and Active Directory coexist. You’ll even learn how to map E.164 phone numbers to URIs.
As in previous editions, DNS and Bind is organized to follow your zone’s evolution, and your own growing expertise as a DNS administrator. You’ll learn just enough theory, decide whether to set up your own zones, then walk through doing so, step-by-step. The authors cover zone maintenance, configuring hosts to use nameservers, planning for growth, subdomains, and much more.
There’s a full section on troubleshooting. And the book’s replete with coverage of tools, including many of the authors’ own Perl programs. Indispensable then; indispensable now. Bill Camarda, from the July 2006 Read Only