Questions about using a free DNS.

Scientia scientia at XXXtechnologist.com
Tue Jul 13 18:26:40 UTC 1999


Questions about using a free DNS.

Hello.

I have 2 domains and I need to have DNS wildcards,
but I have been unlucky with my providers so far:
my first provider did not even know what DNS wildcards are
and was not able to set them up;
my new provider is always busy: he needed more than 1 week only
to set up one account of mine (with normal DNS), and now 8 days have
passed since I requested DNS wildcards, but he did not reply to me yet.

I am considering to use a free DNS (such as eu.org or granitecanyon.com?)
to set up DNS wildcards for my second domain, but I do not know anything
about DNS, Bind, and so on.
However, I want only to set up DNS wildcards for my 2 domains
only one time: that's all.
I was not supposed to do this by myself, but I am unlucky
with my Providers, so I am considering to act by myself.

So my questions are:
1) How can I setup DNS wildcards for my domains on granitecanyon.com ?
Is it so easy that someone can tell me in a simple post like this,
or do I need to read and learn something specific?
Someone told me something like  * IN CNAME  but I do not understand
at all what it means and where I should put those informations.

2) Of course I need an IP address for my second domain (that is not
routed yet). Can I use for my second domain
the same IP that is already working for my first domain?
(My first domain is working correctly with my provider's DNS,
but without wildcards).
Of course I understand that, if it works, both domains would reach
the same directory and page...

3) I know that DNS wildcards would send all 3rd level subdomains
*.mydomain.com  to the main page of  mydomain.com .
I would put there an index.cgi (a Perl program) to redirect
the different subdomains. This is valid for 3rd level subdomains.
What about 4th level subdomains like *.*.mydomain.com ?
Would they also come to  mydomain.com ? Or special settings are required?
Specifically, what would happen if one browses  www.*.mydomain.com ?

4) Suppose that I can set up successfully my second domain with DNS
wildcards on granitecanyon.com . So I will want to route also my first
domain through DNS wildcards on granitecanyon. But my first domain is 
already
routed on the DNS of my provider and it is working (without wildcards).
So what should I do? Of course I should inform the NIC authority about
the new DNS. Then I should inform my provider, who is always busy...
So, if my domain is both on my provider's DNS and on granitecanyon DNS,
may be there a conflict?!

5) Final question (it is less important).
My provider offers the service of "DNS aliasing": the DNS would
appear as  ns.mydomain.com  instead of  ns.myprovider.com .
I asked informations about this, but of course he does not reply.
Suppose that my domain remains on the DNS of my provider. My questions 
are:
- Does DNS aliasing change the ns addresses or do they remain the same?
- Does my domain remain in the same DNS file (table?) or a new
DNS file is created just for me?
- Does this operation cause a propagation delay?

Thanks!
Regards

Fabrizio Coppola
fabrcop at tin.it


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