Another Newbie Question.

[Kevin Darcy]

DanO wrote:

> I'm one of those people that if it seems too simple. I worry.
>     So, here goes. I'm getting a SDSL connection for my home office.
> The ISP, Cais, says I can do whatever I want, Web server, dns, even dialup.
> So, they give me 8 static IP's to start, ( up to 32 for free ).
>  I currently have 5 domain names registered to my company, and I'm going to
> setup my own name servers for those domains along with the web server.
>     1) How is the control of those IP's passed on to me.
>     2) I assign the name servers each an IP,
>                      Who registers the servers ?
>     3) Are the IP's re-registered to me with Arin.
>
> Is their anything I have to watch for in setting up my own servers? or is it
> as simple as it seems.
> Thanx

If you already have 5 domains registered, you'll need to migrate those to your
servers from wherever they are being served today. In order to cause the least
amount of service interruption, the usual procedure is, for each zone
(obviously some of these steps can be done in parallel for multiple zones):

1. First set up your designated-master server as a slave. This will require
that the current master permits your server to do zone transfers.
2. Depending on your network diversity, redundancy, availability needs, etc.
you might want to line up some other servers as slaves, on your site and
possibly also on other networks. Maybe the organization which is currently
running the master server might be a good choice (?) Any new slaves will also
need to be permitted to do zone transfers. Verify that all the zone transfers
are working properly.
3. Have the current master add NS records pointing to your designated-master
server, and any other new slaves, into the zone. New NS'es should also be added
to the delegation records from the parent zone; this will need to be done
through your domain registrar. Allow enough time for the changes to propagate.
4. Optionally, if you think it might be easier to maintain than the copy you
pulled as a slave, and if they are willing to do so, have the current
maintainers of the master send you the master zonefile.
5. Reconfigure your server as master for the zone. The zone definition on the
old master should then either be deleted or converted to slave. Now you can
maintain your own zone data.

Your reverse (address-to-name mapping) zone is a little trickier. The reverse
zone namespace is octet-oriented (e.g. 70.94.189.204.in-addr.arpa is where
you'd actually find the PTR record for the IP address 204.189.94.70), so if you
want to maintain the reverse data yourself, for anything less than a /24 aka
"class C", it's not exactly trivial to do so. RFC 2317 "Classless in-addr.arpa
Delegation" is a Best Current Practices document that explains how this can be
done. According to that, your provider will need to provide aliases in the
"real" reverse zone which point to entries in a zone you control. Hopefully
your provider is savvy enough to be able to explain this in detail, and also to
suggest a naming convention for the zone you should use as a container for your
reverse zone data. If not, then switch providers  :-) or post another message
to the list/newsgroup, or just search the archives, since classless
in-addr.arpa delegation tends to be a frequently asked-about-and-answered topic
here.


- Kevin