dns puzzlement

Simon Waters Simon at wretched.demon.co.uk
Wed Dec 31 01:32:38 UTC 2003


ian wrote:
> 
> 1. If I buy a domain name from a domain name registration company, say
> for instance dog.net, and give the site the name of my machine with
> the demon ip number will I be able to have a functioning domain. As
> far as I can see this would work, but I must confess to some
> puzzlement. Presumably the domain registar would register the name and
> ip numbers with the .net servers, which would then point to the static
> ip address, so anyone searching for my web site would find put in
> www.dog.net, and be directed there, if I set up a nameserver on my
> machine to supply the ip address. But wouldn't reverse lookups always
> point back to the demon address?
The reverse lookup of Demon SDU IP addresses will be the Demon hostname.

Since the forward look-up of the Demon hostname will be that IP address,
this should not cause any technical problems.

So the set up described should work.

Demon won't alter the DNS on these account as far as I know.

Other Demon products may work differently, you'd have to ask Demon.

> 2. If this is the case how do you obtain your own domain, this process
> seems rather opaque to me. I have looked on sites such as
> totalRegistrations and although you can buy the domain name there is
> no provision for getting an ip number, do you get this from somewhere
> else? Presumably a ISP?

IP address allocation has nothing to do with the DNS.

There is no reason to expect any mapping between name and IP address
except in the in-addr.arpa. zone. So you can buy a domain from any
number of people. Some will run the DNS for the domain and allow you a
web interface for making changes, which is usually far easier and more
reliable than running your own name servers.

European IP addresses are allocated by RIPE, typically to ISPs or large
organisations. See www.ripe.net

Often if you obtain a substantial allocation of IP addresses your ISP
(or RIPE) will delegate the management of the reverse lookup to you if
you want it.

Sometimes dedicated webservers are given a PTR that matches the domain
part of the URI (www.ibm.com being an example). But it is of no
technical importance, the only regular use of reverse lookup I come
across is in email servers (antispam tests), and I've sent all sorts of
email from my Demon box over the years, for all sorts of domains.


-- Attached file included as plaintext by Ecartis --

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQE/8ic3GFXfHI9FVgYRAv8OAJ9bUpi3wu0W2j6NFAJR/4OrXrwBcACgk8Xl
pWHDSkLIC908SbfVTSmKkKk=
=pW4u
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----




More information about the bind-users mailing list