DNS server setup

[Jonathan Hutchins]

Quoting Matthew Freeland <matthew at mfreeland.net>:  
  
> Hi.  I own the domain mfreeland.net, which I wish to use as my personal  
> domain for email/web site/ftp/telnet/etc.    
  
Most of us Linux folk seem to go through this "what do you mean I can't run my  
own DNS - didn't I buy the domain?" phase.  
  
You need two EXTERNAL DNS servers, to be specified by IP address (not domain  
name) in order for the outside world to be able to resolve addresses within  
your network.  The second one is for fault tolerance, and should ideally be  
located at a seperate physical location on a different provider's network  
(Microsoft forgot to follow this rule and lost their entire web for a day  
once).  
  
In the "legitimate" business world, your ISP sets up one of the DNS servers  
for you, or entries on it's own DNS server for your domain, and farms the  
other server out to a contracted third party.  (Lots of ISP's cheap out and  
don't do the right thing on that, they just run a second server on-site).  
  
However, in the Linux world, most of us have a "residential" line, our ISP  
will not supply or support using it as a world-resolvable domain, and we're  
too cheap to fork out the extra bucks for their "business" rate that includes  
domain name service.  
  
Some DNS Registries are kind enough to allow you to enter a single IP for all  
traffic to your domain to get forwarded to.  Many will at least forward the  
www. host of your domain to an IP, and if they'll also forward mail to an IP  
that's all you usually need.  
  
If you're on some crappy DSL connection like SWB residential (or, shudder,  
dial-up like me), then you may have the problem of a truely dynamic IP address  
that changes all the time.  If that's the case, then a service like dyndns is  
what you need, so you can make quick, easy updates to your IP whenever it  
changes.  
 
You will have the joy of running your own internal DNS for your masqueraded 
network, and you can use it to point certain obnoxious domains like 
addserver.com at something more fun and interesting. 
 
Welcome to the world of residential networking! 

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