Newbie question again...

[Jeff Lasman]

Dave Comcast wrote:

> Unfortunantly, there is no other option in this area.  I have 5 static IP's
> and the bandwidth to do this.

We (and others) have found that DSL and cable connectivity just isn't
reliable.  When it goes down (and it does; in fact it seems to have for
a while earlier today) it can take a long time to get fixed.  I've got
DSL connection from my home office to the net; it's been down several
hours at a time, several times during the past year.  It was once down
for 25 hours straight, and then up and down for days.  Another time it
took them 18 hours to get it back up and when they got it up they gave
me new IP#s.  Think of how long it would take to get your nameservers
renumbered and you'd know why DSL isn't reliable enough for use for
nameservers.  While I don't have personal experience with cable, some of
my friends and acquaintances do; If pressed, I'd say it's just as
unreliable as DSL.

If you must host your sites on your Comcast connection, at least
consider having your DNS hosted professionally by a DNS service
provider.  Lots of companies (including us, and probably including
Comcast) offer it, and even the completely free DNS hosting services
would be better than hosting it yourself at the end of an unreliable
connection.

> When everything is running properly, I will
> switch romehosting.com to these name servers also.

My fear is that it'll never really run what the rest of us would
consider "properly" because your connection will never be reliable
enough.


  Is that why the DNS
> isn't considered authoritative?  Here is my named.conf and zone file.  This
> one is the master.

As "deepdown" pointed out, your nameserver doesn't say it's
authoritative.  I'd strongly suggest having someone else maintain your
DNS, or start reading.  "DNS and Bind" is a good place to start. 
Cricket Liu (also on this list) is a co-author.  Another good book, if
you're using Linux, is "Linux DNS Server Administration" by Craig Hunt,
published by Sybex.

Jeff
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