This section of the Configuring and Managing MPE/iX Internet
Services manual assumes that the reader has prior experience with
DNS BIND as implemented on other operating systems, or
has familiarity with the concepts involved. There are a number of
good textbooks available on this subject to which the reader is
recommended — the following is a brief overview of a sophisticated
system.
The Domain Name System is a distributed and structured directory
of information. One of its more frequent uses is the naming of host
machines. A DNS host name will consist of several fields separated
by dots, for example:
quasar.india.hp.com.
The host quasar exists in
the domain india, which itself
is a subdomain of hp, which is
a subdomain of com, which is a
subdomain of the root domain (identified as ".").
Abstract
With this structured naming convention, the responsibility
for maintaining accurate database information for a name domain
can be delegated to a server which is managed by the organization
who owns that domain. for example, DNS server hosts within HP maintain
information about hp.com. Queries
for names inside the domain hp.com
will be referred to that server by servers in other domains. Within
HP, the responsibility for india.hp.com
can also be delegated to another local DNS server.
The way this information is accessed is through client programs
or code routines called "resolvers". When a program
on a client host needs to obtain information about a domain, it
will send a message to the local DNS server host. If the local server
has this information, it will send back a reply immediately. If
the local server does not have this information, it will research
by sending queries to other servers, following the Domain Name System
structure. Once the local server has found an answer for the client,
it will then reply, but will also cache what it has learned in order
to respond more speedily to subsequent queries.
Before MPE/iX 6.0, hosts running MPE/iX were able to make
DNS queries of servers running on other machines and operating systems.
Now a full implementation of the server code has been introduced.
DNS BIND/iX will enable your MPE/iX host to act as a DNS
server, both responding to queries (from clients and other servers)
as well as communicating with other DNS servers on the local network
and the Internet.
DNS BIND/iX on MPE/iX 6.0 is an implementation of BIND version 8.1.1,
which has introduced many new features since the more commonly used
version 4.9.4, (with which the majority of experienced DNS users
will be familiar).
This is the latest version of BIND, 8.1.1. with features like:
completely new configuration syntax
flexible and categorized logging system
more efficient zone transfers
The package contains a host of utilities and administration
tools:
nslookup — query Internet
name servers interactively
dig — Domain Information Groper
host — look up host names using domain
server
addr — get address of host
dnsquery — give all the DNS details and
Mail exchange records
