This chapter focuses on the Domain Name System (DNS), a service that translates human-readable domain names such as www.mommabears.com to IP addresses such as 10.245.43.5, and vice versa. DNS is a distributed database; each server has its own delegated zone of authority for one or more domains.
The DNS service associated with RHEL is the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND). In this chapter, you'll learn how to edit and modify BIND configuration files to create authoritative DNS servers as well as slave and caching servers.
Once configured, there are a number of BIND utilities that can help find the systems on the local network as well as those on any other connected network, including the Internet.
| On the Job |
If you're interested in Dynamic DNS and Linux, one place to start is the Secure Dynamic DNS HOWTO from the Internet Engineering Task Force, at http://ops.ietf.org/dns/dynupd/secure-ddns-howto.html. |