Customer Reviews

DNS and Bind

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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'.

(...)

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.

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.

This is the best book to have with you when you're working with DNS. It has useful, clear, and well-explained examples. Its presentation of real-life scenarios and how to solve them in a reasonable manner is very thorough. You are shown how to troubleshoot problems using nslookup, dig, and BIND's own debug output. The fourth edtion expands on security and new features found in BIND 9. A well-written book that is very easy to follow for beginners and experts alike. It should be required reading for anyone working with DNS. This book definitely belongs in the classic category.

If you've been afraid of diving into the depths of DNS, maybe because your readings through a few RFC documents proved fruitless, then fear no more.

In the first few chapter your taught how DNS servers work, sparing no detail. Concepts like negative-caching, recursive resolution, and inverse queries are explained and demonstrated with great examples and graphs. The chapters on configuring and managing BIND almost make things look too simple and easy. This is also a great book to learn how to use tools like 'nslookup' and 'dig'.

When it comes to the world of DNS records it's hard to find authoritative answers to questions, besides a few sites like Mr.DNS, the authors of this book recognized that need and sought to help fill the gap of knowledge.

I bought this book to understand the basics
of DNS. Needless to say the book did its job
well. Explains the concepts, set up and
Administration very well.

From the programmers point of view
this book had very good examples.
The C examples were well documented and explained
the workings of a resolver pretty well.

Overall, I cannot think of a better reference/guide
book for DNS.

DNS is a tough topic to explain; especially to those of us that have always worked in the Microsoft/WINS world. This book does a great job of that. The book is accurate and well organized and it holds a reserved spot on my shelf of regular reference guides. I recommend a little bit of basic knowledge of DNS when starting this book and then re-read the first chapter or two, but it does a great job of explaining DNS so that even Microsoft-centric people like me can understand.

Before reading this book, using Bind was a daunting and intimidtaing task. Even when I followed examples on web tutorials, I found I still didn't understand what it was I was doing. But having read this book, I feel much more confident using Bind and DNS in general. Unintuitive config files are now totally readable, and fancy terms such as "zone" or "reverse mapping" make much more sense now.

I definitely recommend this book to Unix netadmins because this book has a lot of practical advice for how best to optomize Bind in a network, and how to deal with tricky tasks such as delegating and compensating for network disasters (a must read section).

Best of all, the book is very easy to read, rather humorous at times, and has something for people of all levels of experience. I whole heartedly give this book 5 stars, and strongly urge other Unix/LInux folks to read it too. Enjoy!

I really needed to understand DNS/BIND; not just know how to start, run, and update it- but really understand DNS. This book was perfect. The authors introduced DNS with a high-level overview and then moved in closer to help you set it up. You can actually read the fist 3 chapters and work through the next 2 while setting up your server and domain. The rest of the book really gets into the nuts and bolts of DNS and BIND. Don't stop after chapter 5, continue reading and pick all the knowledge you will need to be a DNS/BIND admin.

I bought this book then Craig Hunt's DNS book. This book is better. I bought Craig's hoping it would be easier to read which it was but I found myself going back to O'Reillys time after time.

As are most Tech books, you will find this very dry and cumbersome unless you're already a DNS wiz. I was trying to learn DNS form scratch and neither of the books made it easy.

The first chapter of every Linux book needs to be some sort of a "Quick Start" just to get the server running. I am so tired of grudging through 3 or 4 chapters of unnecessary detail just to get something installed and working. Don't get me wrong. Detail is good but if your a Linux book author, simplify the install and configuration so we can get whatever it is working, then go into the detail.

Go ahead and get this one for DNS. You don't really have a choice.