BIND or Equiv for NT?

[Howard W Wortley]

MS NT has a DNS service which can be installed from the network manager in
control panel. The release version is very buggy but the version on service
pack 5 is ok. MS DNS has a major advantage on MS internal networks in that
it has a non-standard record "WINS" which allows complete integration of
WINS DNS and DHCP. This is of course irrelevant on the public internet. MS
DNS also has a GUI for administration and creation of the zone files.
However usage of this GUI is to say the least not intuitive i.e. if you do
not already know how to set up DNS then you won't find out from the program
or it's help file. Neither will the excellent O'Reilly "DNS & Bind" help
much for "hands on" as it ignores MS DNS (and others with a GUI such as
Incognito, Vermilion etc). There is a good web url for MS and BIND DNS
advice at http://www.ezine.com

There is an excellent (free) implementation of BIND 497 for NT which can be
downloaded from http://www.bhs.com among other places and running it is
exactly the same as under unix except that named.boot is located in the
%winnt% directory. It has a control panel applet for running the service but
the zone files are usually created using notepad, pfe or whatever. It is
possible to use zone files form a unix/linux system and vice versa.

Of the two I prefer BIND for classic internet style stuff and MS DNS for
internal private network resolution inside a firewall. MS DNS and Bind get
along together just fine.

These days a lot of people are thinking about running DNS who do not need
to. The old style A B C classful address has largely been dropped in favour
of CIDR classless addressing which enables rapid routing. It has to be
understood that just having one or more static ip addresses allocated to you
does NOT mean you can run DNS for those addresses. This depends on having
delegated authority for those numbers which can ONLY come from the ISP
giving you the block. Even if you try and run DNS you will find that without
the delegation it will not work due to the need for reverse addressing. It
is wildly unlikely that an ISP will delegate authority for a single ip
address although theoretically it can be done. This is a bummer for those
who want to host a lot of vortual web sites on one ip. So it goes.

It is possible for an isp to delegate authority for  a block of ip addresses
say 8, 16 or whatever and some will agree to do that. However the method is
a little tricky and not all would agree. The how-to is in DNS & Bind. It is
much more difficult to setup DNS in this situation on MS DNS than BIND 497
but it is possible.

Lastly for the many who want to do it it is impossible to run DNS, www, smtp
off a dynamic ip address as is the case with a cable modem. This is because
DNS requires a fixed permanent address. However a visit to either
http://www.dynip.com or http://www.tzo.com will provide you with an answer
for a small outlay. Note that most cable modem contracts have a clause which
surcharges above a certain monthly data level and most also prohibit
attaching multiple machines or usage for commercial purposes.

John Smith <redhotwa at one.net.au> wrote in message
news:3800436c.0 at pink.one.net.au...
> Can anyone tell me if Windows NT, has a bind/dns equivelant and is it any
> good?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Nick
>
>
>