Domains, DNS and name servers, HELP!

[ripsaw82]

Right there is a little thing i do not understand (As i have never come accross it before).

I have bought a domain, for example www.example.com

Now if i have 3 servers that i want to be accessable on the net for example

www.example.com - Web page
terminal.example.com - Terminal Services Server
mail.example.com - E-Mail

Do install a DNS server on the server that resolves to example.com, then in that add entrys for

terminal.example.com
mail.example.com

in MY DNS Server? Then as long as the servers all have puplic IP's it will work??

[Steve]

Erm, I aren't sure, but you should usually get your domain registrar to set that domain to point to whatever IP the server uses.

I'm afraid I'm not up on subdomains, so I can't give you any more advice.

[Paul Adams]

First off, just a minor correction - in your example the domain is example.com, not www.example.com

The people who registered your domain are most likely listed as the start of authority and have the ability to modify the DNS records for you.

The hosts "www" and "terminal" would be 'A' records and allow the hostnames www.example.com and terminal.example.com to resolve to IP addresses respectively - depending on the value of the record.

Mail is a little different - you need an MX record to indicate where mail for your domain is routed to, this can either be an IP address directly or a host name (which would require another 'A' record).
You can have more than 1 MX record if required.

Examples work best:

example.com
www A 12.34.56.78
terminal A 87.65.43.21
mail A 12.12.12.12
MX mail.example.com

www.example.com resolves to 12.34.56.78
terminal.example.com resolves to 87.65.43.21

Mail for your domain is sent to mail.example.com, which resolves to 12.12.12.12


Your domain hosting company should be able to sort this out for you - a lot of hosting companies have web-based interfaces so you can do a great deal of it yourself.

Remember, these IP addresses must be public ones, don't try putting 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x addresses in there, noone will be able to route to you


If you want to have your own DNS server, then your domain record needs to reflect this by an 'NS' (name server) record.
If you don't know a great deal about DNS I would strongly recommend avoiding this.

HTH

[ripsaw82]

See i have bought the domain, and its hosted with them (Currently) I said i wanted to host the site on my servers and want them to change the DNS to the IP of my Server. They said they can do this, but they want the Primary and Secondary Name servers IP's to do this. This is what has confussed me.

[Paul Adams]

Hmm, sounds like you would be well to transfer the domain to someone who allows you to modify your domain records directly.

I use www.123-reg.co.uk, they have a web-based control panel so you can just set up the records yourself, they have a pretty good FAQ section - here's their page on DNS stuff.

[ripsaw82]

i bought another domain with 123-reg, and they are much better, i actually have DNS controlls!!!!

[welly]

Just out of interest, I've got a domain name pointing to my web server at home, through www.zoneedit.com, who supply free DNS services. Basically you run a piece of software which updates zoneedit with your current IP address and as such your domain name can point to anywhere you wish it to.

[scottyman]

I'm with welly on this one - depending on your router, it may also support other free dynamic dns servers such as dyndns or free-ip
i've been using dyndns for the last few years, and every time my router's ip changes, it changes at dyndns so I don't lose any spam!

[aidanjt]

See i have bought the domain, and its hosted with them (Currently) I said i wanted to host the site on my servers and want them to change the DNS to the IP of my Server. They said they can do this, but they want the Primary and Secondary Name servers IP's to do this. This is what has confussed me.

Basically, the people you registered your domain from will forward DNS requests to your domain to your own DNS servers (other words they will host the NS records), they will add the forwarding records to their DNS servers, and your own DNS server will deal with the A and MX records (Host to IP resolution, and mail exchange server).. also make sure you contact the ISP/Lease provider hosting the servers to update their PTR records (IP to Host resolution) for consistancy.

Heres what happens.. client X opens his browser and types 'www.example.com'.. his browser asks his ISP's DNS server if it knows this domain, and the likelyhood is no.. so it connects to the .com root server and fetches a list of DNS servers.. it checks with each DNS server for the existance of example.com domain, when it finds it it will use the NS record to connect to and asks your DNS server what is the ip of www.example.com.. his ISP caches this new DNS information and sends the resolved IP number to the client, which allows X to connect to your webserver.

I could explain the exact process in greater detail however it would likely to leave more confused than when you started reading lol. I hope this is clear enough.

But that is it in a nutshell, if your really going to get into DNS in a big way you should probibly buy a book on BIND, or try experimenting with BIND on a *NIX box. man bind is a great help, and google is your friend as always.