DNS & BIND Cookbook

TCP/IP Network Administration (3rd Edition; O'Reilly Networking)

Postfix : The Definitive Guide

Administration

DNS and BIND, Fourth Edition

Format: Paperback
Author: Paul Albitz
ReleaseDate: 01 January, 2001
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

Most comprehensive book on DNS and Bind


The domain name system or domain name server (DNS) is a system that stores and associates many types of information with domain names, but, most important, it translates the domain name (computer hostnames) to IP addresses. First off, the most recent edition of this book was published in May 2006, so all reviews prior to that are discussing previous editions of this book. It also lists mail exchange servers accepting e-mail for each domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, DNS is an essential component of contemporary Internet use. DNS is most well-known for making it possible to attach easy-to-remember domain names to hard-to-remember IP addresses. BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet, especially on Unix-like systems, where it is a de facto standard. A new version of BIND (BIND 9) was written from scratch in part to address the architectural difficulties with auditing the earlier BIND code bases, and also to support DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions). Other important features of BIND 9 include: TSIG, DNS notify, nsupdate, IPv6, rndc flush, views, multiprocessor support, and an improved portability architecture. This book was written to address these changes.

DNS is being used for many more applications than in the past. With ENUM (electronic numbering), DNS is used by voice-over-IP gear. With SPF (the Sender Policy Framework), mailers look up information in DNS to check for mail spoofing. This makes DNS more critical than ever, and a target for hackers. To handle these additional applications and increased threats, DNS has had to be extended, adding cryptographic security, for example.

These topics and others are covered in the new edition of DNS and BIND. Security is therefore one of the topics that is deeply covered in this book. The previous editions of this book also described how to secure name servers, but most readers probably felt the likelihood of their name servers coming under attack was remote where today it is probably going to happen. There's been a recent spate of DNS amplification attacks reported in the news, therefore it is necessary for system administrators of Internet name servers to guard against these attacks by limiting access top recursion, which is covered in the chapter entitled "Security".

The new and fifth edition of this old standard covers BIND 9. 3. 2, the most recent release of the BIND 9 series, as well as BIND 8. 4. 7. Beginning with an introduction to DNS and what it does, the book guides administrators through all aspects of setting up, configuring, and working with the distributed host information database. Other topics include using MX records to route mail, subdividing domains, the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and Transaction Signatures (TSIG), dynamic updates, troubleshooting, and DNS programming using the resolver library and Perl's Net::DNS module. All of the programming examples in the book can be downloaded from the website of the latest edition of the book. Anyone who works with DNS regularly or wants to be more informed about the Internet and how it works will find this book useful. There are other books on this subject that are easier to read, but none that are as complete as this one. I highly recommend it.

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Informative, but not as clear as it could be
I found The Concise Guide to DNS and BIND by Nicolai Langfeldt to be more understandable in some places. I found this book to be informative, but I sometimes had trouble understanding what they where saying. If you have a good grasp of other parts of unix system administration, this book would most likely be fine. If you are more of a beginner and only want one book, get The Concise Guide. However, I recommend getting both, because they supplement each other very well.

Excellent Explanations
The first two chapters introduce the Name Server concept and give a complete overview. This book is a must have if you want to learn about DNS. The following chapters take the reader step by step through the procedures for setting up DNS. Each one building on the others. While I thought I had a fair understanding of DNS, the authors fully explain each section of the configurations. The information is very understandable even for the novice. The authors even compare the differences between the older versions of BIND and the newer versions through 9. 1.