Domain Name Service (DNS)

Training Division, NIC New Delhi

Domain Name Service (DNS)

I. History of DNS II. DNS structure and its components III. Functioning of DNS IV. Replicating DNS V. Dynamic update of DNS VI. Maintaining and Monitoring DNS Servers VII. DNS command line utilities

I.History of DNS
Resources on the Internet supported by HOSTS file. was originally

Names and the corresponding IP addresses were entered by the network administrators into this file. HOSTS.TXT was maintained by the Network Information Centre (NIC) and contained the Host name to address mappings.

 Updating the HOSTS file became difficult with the explosive growth of Internet. The file grew bigger and could not be partitioned as it used a flat namespace. The task became networks grew. management intensive as

This called for a more sophistciated and well defined naming service structure that was hierarchically structured.

 Thus DNS was introduced in the year 1984 for translating the resource names into IP addresses. The host names reside in a database and can be distributed among multiple servers. The hierarchical namespace also provided rules for dividing the namespace into subsets of names. Information about the host names and IP addresses could be partitioned and distributed.

II. DNS Structure and its components

a. DNS domain namespace
Structured hierarchy of domains to organize names.

b. Resource records
Maps DNS domain names to a specific type of resource information when the name is registered or resolved in the namespace.

c. DNS Zones
Zone is a range of responsibility within the domain name space that spans a subtree or a portion of a sub-tree

d. DNS Name servers

Stores and answer name queries for resource records.

e. DNS clients or resolvers

Query servers to look up and resolve names to a type of resource record specified in the query.

a. DNS Domain Namespace Domain name space is a hierarchical tree structure containing the names in a DNS database. The database consists of Hosts name and Domain name. A Domain Can be considered as a subtree of the domain name space. Domain names are of a specific pattern that is concatenation of node names eg.training.nic.in.

 The Internet can be thought of as a single DNS namespace. The root or the top-most level of the Internet domain namespace is managed by the Internet name registration authority. The root has no name but is represented by a period or . Below the root DNS domain are the top level domains. The Top level domains are child of the root.

Three Types of Top Level Domains

Organisational Are represented by a 3-character code that gives a clear indication of the primary activity of the domain.They are mainly for organisations within the United States. Geographical Are represented by a 2-character code that represents the country ,region code .These codes are established by the International Standards organisation (ISO). Reverse Domains This is named as in-addr.arpa which is used for IP addressto-name mappings.

Domain levels Name Top-level domain First-Level Domain Second-Level Domain Third-level Domain Child of Root Domain
in

Top-level domain First-level domain Second-level domain

nic.in delhi.nic.in gamma.training.nic.in

.com
.in .gov nic mah asm .edu

.arpa

kar

Domain Name System (Inverted Tree Structure)

Domain levels Top-level domain .com Description Domain name example

yahoo.com

Commercial organisation Education institutions Government organisations

.edu

buffalo.edu

.gov

nasa.gov

b.Resource Records DNS database consists of Resource Records(RR). Each resource record is a member of class.(INTERNET Class is the most popular) The Class is further broken down into Types. The type corresponds to the type of data stored in the record. eg: server1.com IN A 124.x.y.z (IN stands for INTERNET and A stands for address information.) a

c. DNS Zones

DNS database is comprised of multiple zones. Zones allowed the management of the domain space to be delegated.


Zone

in

com

org

Zone

nic

training.nic.in domain Zone

nic.in domain

training

Fig 1:Zones within the Domain Namespace


Zone

in
nic.in domain

com

org

Zone

nic

training.nic.in domain

asm

Zone Zone

training

Fig 2:

Different types of Zones and Zone files There are two types of Zones A query uses forward zone when resolution starts with a domain name and result in an IP address. A query uses reverse zone when the resolution starts with an IP address and results in a domain name.

Creating Forward Lookup Zone

Forward Lookup
IP address for trglab.nic.in IP address = 192.168.0.16

DNS Server

Zone Types,Zone Names and Zone File

Standard Zones
Change

Zone Transfer

Primary Zone

Secondary Zone

Active Directory Integrated Zones

Zone Transfer

Change

Change

Change

Creating Reverse Lookup Zones

Reverse Lookup

Name for 192.168.0.16? Name = trglab.nic.in DNS Server

Configuring Standard Zones

A
DNS Server A

Primary Zone

Zone Information
Secondary Zone (Master DNS Server = DNS Server A)
DNS Server C

Secondary Zone (Master DNS Server = DNS Server A)

DNS Server B

d.DNS Name Servers DNS zone database is stored in and accessed through a name server. Name servers can store data for one zone or multiple zones. A name server is said to have authority for the domain namespace that the zone encompasses. There must be at least one name server for a zone

III.Functioning of DNS
DNS uses a client/server architecture. Domain name resolvers. clients are called name

DNS client requests information from a Servers database.

DNS

The request include type of information and a key(either a domain name or IP address).

Resolution

A DNS Server receives two types of requests Recursive Iterative DNS clients always makes recursive requests whereas DNS server uses both types of requests.

The following is a list of responses :

Positive authoritative Positive Referral Negative

DNS Server Primary zone

4

Root . DNS Server in

Primary zone in DNS Server

Primary zone nic.in DNS Server Primary zone training.nic.in

nic

DNS Server 1
2

Cache <empty>

9 10

training

11 training.nic.in

DNS Client

Fig1:Iterative Name Resolution starting from the root name server.

domain

DNS Server Primary zone

4

Root . DNS Server in

Primary zone in DNS Server

Primary zone nic.in DNS Server Primary zone training.nic.in

nic

DNS Server 1
2

Cache <empty>

9 10

training

11

training.nic.in DNS Client domain Fig 2

IV.Replication of DNS
Replicating a zone file to multiple name servers is called zone transfer. Zone transfer is accomplished by copying the zone file information from master server to secondary server. There are two types of zone file replication
Full zone transfer (AXFR), replicates the entire zone file. Incremental zone transfer (IXFR), replicates only the changed records of the zone.

Zone Transfer Process

DNS Server
(Master)

DNS Server Primary Zone Database File expt1 trglab Secondary Zone Database File expt2

Zone 1

Configuring Zone transfers

V.Dynamic Update of DNS

Enables DNS client computers to register and dynamically update their resource records with a DNS server whenever changes occur.

Allow Windows 2000 clients to update their own forward lookup records, and they allow DHCP and WINS servers to update the forward and reverse lookup records of all clients.

VI.Maintaining and monitoring DNS

Using Cache-only servers to reduce network traffic Using the DNS Snap-in Using the nslookup utility.

VII. DNS Command Line Utilities

DNSCMD IPCONFIG NET NETSH NSLOOKUP