[Preston] DNS Question

[Ken Wolstencroft]

Hi Andrew,

You can setup your own non internet zone (e.g. school.lancs) in your
/etc/named.conf file.
You can then create the appropriate zone file for your internal computers
(e.g.  timmy    IN      A    10.67.24.6).

Then point your internal computers DNS resolvers to your internal DNS
server. Now when DNS queries are made for internal computers, your internal
DNS will resolve them. As long as you have recursion on in you
/etc/named.conf file, it will also be able to pass queries upto the root DNS
servers for resolving internet zones.

I suggest you obtain a copy of the O'reilly DNS and Bind book, it will give
you a good reference guide.

All the best,
Ken

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew King" <plug@andyroo.demon.co.uk>
To: <preston@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 6:55 PM
Subject: [Preston] DNS Question


> Hi all,
>
> Despite spending a small while going through google and the likes,
> there's something I've still not figured out at DNS.
>
> Our network uses internal IPs, in the range 10.67.24.0/22. We're one
> school out of many, and each school in Lancashire has been allocated a
> different set of IPs in this 10.x.x.x line.
>
> We have a link to the Internet, and to get an Internet connection, we
> need to point out workstations to the DNS servers 212.219.82.4 and
> 212.219.83.4. We then have to point our browsers to
> proxy.lancsngfl.ac.uk:8080 (since they firewall practically everything
> and just give us a proxy and DNS). That's fine, and it's what we're
> doing at the moment.
>
> I've recently been setting Linux up though and moving some of the
> functions of the network over to Linux - the first and second years now
> have a 25MB quota limit on their N:\ drives, and when they want to go on
> the Net, instead of going straight to the NGFL proxy, they go to our
> proxy, which asks for their NT username and password again, and then
> checks this off against an ACL in /etc/squid.conf to decide whether
> they're allowed on the Internet or not (if anyone wants to know how to
> do this stuff, let me know - I'm slowly writing up documents on how to
> do it and putting them on my site).
>
> I know we don't need it, but I'd /like/ to have internal DNS, if at all
> possible. Partly just so that I can set up a DNS server somewhere and
> learn how it's done. I've read a fair bit into BIND, and messed with
> config files, but that's all. Here's my question though:
>
> Our Linux server is 10.67.24.6. It'd be much easier to call this
> something like timmy, for instance, so that I can refer people to our
> internal web site with:
>
> http://timmy
>
> instead of:
>
> http://10.67.24.6
>
> Similarly, it'd be useful to be able to refer to things like network
> printers, wireless access points, important workstations, etc, by
> hostnames. We've got NetBIOS names, which are sometimes useful - but
> they're not always - they don't work for everything.
>
> So that's the question: how does DNS work on an internal network? Can I
> set up a DNS server that can resolve things on 10.67.24.0/22 by itself
> or send on the request to a 'real' DNS server on the Internet if that
> doesn't work?
>
> If someone could clear that up for me, it'll save me a load of
> reading... thanks :))
>
> Andrew
>
>
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