Setting up re-direction

[Joseph S D Yao]

> I have just bought a domain but would like to know how to set it up to point
> to my free pages.

Boy, that's about as classic a statement of the misunderstanding about
DNS and URLs as I've ever heard.

Short answer: You can't.  [But read on.]

DNS doesn't handle URLs - at least, not at this time.  There are some
experimental extensions that might point in that direction, but aren't
used by 99.999999999999% of the software out there.

To start, you must set up a name server, or hire the services of
someone to do so.  If you have just "bought" [registered] a domain,
then you must have told the NIC that you already have name servers for
it, so you should already have known that.  Some name server or servers
must handle both forward and reverse DNS lookups for you.

On your name server, the name "www" [or "web", if you follow the
current preachings of David Yost] needs to point to a computer IP
address.  Not a Web page!  An IP address.  It could also be an alias
for another computer name that has an IP address, but if you do that,
then that's ALL it can be.  Here is an example containing both:

	$ORIGIN my.bought.domain
	$TTL	1d
	@	IN  SOA		... (...)
		IN  NS		...
	web		IN  A		254.253.252.251
	www		IN  CNAME	web.my.bought.domain.
	www2		IN  CNAME	www.freepages.com.

Now, IF you have your own machine, as in the "web" example above, then
you can run a Web server on it, and have a single page, which redirects
the browser [using "meta" lines] to a URL of your choice.  This is at
once the simplest and hardest option.  Hardest - you have to have your
own machine, at a fixed IP address, always available.  Easiest - it
gives you EXACTLY what you want, without requiring anybody else's co-
operation.

If you do not have your own machine, you can still CNAME [alias] out to
another site, as in the "www2" example above.  However, you can NOT
specify which page on that site.  However yet again, IF you can get the
free-page provider to co-operate, some Web servers such as Apache(tm)
can recognize the name by which it's being called, and switch the
browser to the appropriate page.  It's worth a try.

Some sites will offer you all of this - domain pointing to a Web site
hosted on their machines - for one low price.  This is also worth a
try, if you don't want the fun and agony of getting it all to work,
yourself.  ;-)

Good luck!

--
Joe Yao				jsdy at cospo.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
COSPO/OSIS Computer Support					EMT-B
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