Bind for NT - ISDN call set up

[jim at mpn.cp.philips.com]

>>>>> "Dave" == Daves  <dave at aprilcottage.demon.co.uk> writes:

    Dave> Dear All, I am running Bind 4.9.7 for Windows NT which I use
    Dave> with an ISDN router to connect to the Net.

    Dave> I have an issue whereby whenever the named service is
    Dave> started it issues a query to a root name server, as below:
    Dave> Std qry for . of type Auth. NS on class INET addr

    Dave> The problem is that this brings the ISDN link up and
    Dave> therefore incurs unnecessary call charges.  I can't think
    Dave> why the DNS server is issuing this query.

Every name server - other than a root name server - does this. When it
starts, the name server sends a query to at least one of the IP
addresses of the nameservers listed in the hints file (usually called
named.cache but you've called yours cache.dns). This query is to get
the actual names and addresses of the root name servers.

There's not really anything you can do about this. Upgrading to
8.2.2P5 (BIND4 is very dead) would help. As well as getting up to date
code, BIND8.2.2 has some hooks for better usage of dial-up links. You
could also tune your SLIP/PPP settings to minimise call charges. For
instance you could keep the dial-up interface up for one PTT charging
unit after a DNS query in the hope that this will be followed by more
external network traffic, like a connection to a web server or another
DNS lookup.

I suppose you could ftp the root zone file from ftp.rs.internic.net
and pretend to be a root server, but that's a lot of work and would
probably cost a lot more in time and traffic than an ISDN call when
you restart the name server as you do at present.