BIND for other applications

Schmidt, Val Val.Schmidt at qwest.com
Fri Jan 26 16:29:18 UTC 2001


Please bear with me as I am a Newbie to BIND and have only a theoretical
understanding of DNS.
 
I have an application for which I need a distributed, robust database.  I
need to be able to make relatively frequent updates, and have those changes
propagated appropriately in short order.  I also need some level of security
and I need a response time that is relatively short.  Most importantly, I
need a system with very, very little down time.
 
My question is simply this:  Could BIND be used as the engine behind a
distributed, hierarchical database that contained records other than domain
names and IP addresses?  I'm not proposing to extend the DNS system - I'm
proposing to use the same software to create a semi-private system with a
different data set.
 
Further questions:
 
In your opinion, how well does the DNS system perform today.  For those of
you with significant operational experience, how frequently do you think a
user is unable to resolve a host name, and what do you think is the most
frequent cause (server traffic?, mismanaged dns data?)
 
Across the DNS system, what in your opinion is the largest bottle neck in
response time of queries? - perhaps overloaded servers, servers that are
inappropriately set in non-recursive mode, or whatever.  
 
It seems that a DNS server could be particularly susceptible to a denial of
service attack.  Has anyone any experience with this and any insight?
 
Finally, I am unable to find the capability in BIND to only allow queries
into the database from specific resolvers.  While it wouldn't seem
particularly useful in the public DNS, it would be useful in my application.
Is there some functionality there that I'm unaware of?
 
I am interested in anyone's opinion and expertise on these issues.  
 
Thank you in advance,
 
Val Schmidt


______________________________________________________
Val E. Schmidt 
Qwest Communications International Inc. 
4650 Lakehurst Ct. 
Dublin, OH 43017 
Tel: (614) 336 5462 
Fax:(614) 336 5677 
val.schmidt at qwest.com <mailto:val.schmidt at qwest.com> 
 <http://www.cauce.org/> 
 



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