DNS and BIND: Amazon.ca: Paul Albitz, Cricket Liu: Books

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This is the definitive book on the Domain Name System (DNS), the powerful scheme that facilitates the translation of English-like domain names (www.amazon.com) into computer-comprehensible Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (208.216.182.15). If you run a DNS server of any kind, particularly under Unix, you need to have this book on hand.

This book's early chapters give a view of DNS from high altitude, explaining basic concepts such as domains, name servers, and name resolution. From there, the authors proceed on a more practical tack, presenting specific instructions for setting up your own domain and DNS server using BIND. The authors then tell you what to do as your domain grows and you need to add more machines, subdomains, and greater throughput capacity. They also talk a lot about nslookup and C programming with the various DNS and BIND libraries. Administrators will find the chapter on BIND debugging output particularly helpful. Here, the authors translate BIND's mysterious error messages and offer specific strategies for fixing and optimizing the program. This edition covers BIND 8.1.2, but pays lots of attention to older versions that are still in wide use (4.8.3 and 4.9). The authors are careful to note differences among the versions. --David Wall

Review

One of the Top Ten Books for 2001. -- Peter H. Salus, ;login: Dec 2001

The DNS bible. If you’re an system administrator with responsibility for DNS management, this book is a must. -- Andrew Ward, Computer Shopper, Feb 2002 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

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4.6 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Best Book for DNS for Unix.....but not Perfect, Dec 11 2001

By

Cody (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: DNS and BIND (Paperback)

This book is read religiously by DNS newbies and administrators alike and for good reason; the book is easily the most thorough of its kind (which isn't saying much considering there is only one other book which really covers DNS & BIND from a strictly Unix perspective). However, it could be better. A couple of times, the author waits until very late in the book to explain what particular commands mean when he could have easily explained them early on to avoid confusion. In the very least, the author should cite a particular chapter for further reading on a particular subject more frequently instead of not even mentioning it. Also, the example/case used throughout the entire book is of a mock company which is setting up a *public* DNS (meaning it communicates with the Internet). The author doesn't mention even once what a user might do if he's setting up an internal DNS for *private* use (not on the Internet). The reader is forced to either make assumptions (not a safe thing to do) or seek documentation elsewhere on this topic. Another complaint I have is that the author does not spend enough time to explain how one might go about mapping devices with multiple interfaces (e.g. routers...sorry, three ambiguous sentences is not enough). That having been said, I still must give it four stars considering it provides plenty of examples (even if none of them reflect a private DNS!) and thorough explanation of how DNS and BIND works. Setting up a DNS without this book would be rather difficult. The only other book worth considering is 'The Concise Guide to DNS & BIND'.

(...)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars This is okay... nothing exciting., May 10 2003

By

Tim Greer "Mr. Tim" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: DNS and BIND (Paperback)

I've you've used BIND much at all and are familair with DNS and how it works a little, and have just read the install, readme, etc. files, you probably won't get much out of this book. BIND has a lot of options and there's a lot to discuss, but this book just covered a lot of basics over a lot of pages. It may be a good source for learning, but I wasn't reading it to learn from start.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent DNS Guide, Dec 23 2001

By

Robert L. Cochran (Greenbelt, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: DNS and BIND (Paperback)

I have both the 3rd and 4th editions of this book. It is a must-read kind of book for those needing to do DNS. I need an understanding of how DNS and BIND work since I wish to get my own internet services re-started. This book provides it. In my experience, DNS can be as painful to re-do correctly as it is to initially set up correctly because once you do have it running properly you can just forget all about it. It "Just Works". So when you are later faced with having to re-learn DNS it can be as painful as the initial learning experience. That is why a book with many how-to coding examples for different DNS zones becomes valuable. I sure wish this book had the examples.

With the understanding that I've only read the first 89 of 600+ pages, I'd like to agree with all the positives cited by other reviewers. You really must get, and read, and re-read, and re-read this book if you want to run web servers, mailing lists, and so on.

For such a comprehensive book, it offers only one getting-started example of use to someone wanting to set up his or her own domain quickly (like me.) The movie.edu examples given are excellent, but at least one additional example is really needed.

How about discussion of and coding examples for a zone named video.biz consisting of 4 machines on the same network plus a print server and a Linksys Cable/DSL router? You know, the kind of zone someone at home or running a small business would establish.

Also I would like to see a new Appendix, Appendix F, discussing common DNS coding mistakes based on the authors experience. Often seeing examples of coding mistakes can help people like me avoid them.

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