Dynamic zone transfers - performance

[John Horne]

Hello,

We have used static zones since we first obtained our IP address range
(many years ago), but we are considering changing to using dynamic
zones.

As an educational site we have many labs and open-access areas where
PC's DHCP to connect to our network. Previously this has been done
within a local MS DNS/DHCP setup. This may change such that our
unix/linux (BIND 9.2.3) name servers handle the dynamic updates from the
DHCP servers (which too may move onto linux boxes).

My question though concerns our remote secondary name servers. They
currently perform incremental zone transfers of the static zones. With
dynamic zones I am anticipating that the number of IXFR zone transfers
will increase quite a lot - we have staff/students starting up PC's all
day long! The current DHCP leases are 3 days long, although I am told
this may increase. We currently have around 5000 PC's and a whole load
of (MS) servers which all DHCP.

My question is whether anyone has experienced any problems when using
dynamic zones and a load of DHCP'ing PC's? In particular I guess I am
thinking about say a Monday morning when a lab of PC's is suddenly
turned on, they all DHCP and all dynamically update the DNS. I am
assuming that all these updates are sent to the secondary name servers
as incremental zone transfers, which is fine, but that there may well be
a lot of them all at once.



Thanks,

John.

-- 
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John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK  Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: John.Horne at plymouth.ac.uk       Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839