DNS and BIND, 5th Edition

Chapter 3. Where Do I Start?

“What do you call yourself?” the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!

“I wish I knew!” thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, “Nothing, just now.”

“Think again,” it said: “that won’t do.”

Alice thought, but nothing came of it. “Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?” she said timidly. “I think that might help a little.”

“I’ll tell you, if you come a little further on,” the Fawn said. “I can’t remember here.”

Now that you understand the theory behind the Domain Name System, we can attend to more practical matters. Before you set up your zones, you may need to get the BIND software. Usually, it’s standard in most Unix-based operating systems. Often, though, you’ll want to seek out a more recent version with all the latest functionality and security enhancements.

Once you have BIND, you need to decide on a domain name for your main zone; this may not be quite as easy as it sounds because it entails finding an appropriate place in the Internet namespace. With that decided, you need to contact the administrators of the parent of the zone whose domain name you’ve chosen.

One thing at a time, though. Let’s talk about where to get BIND.

Getting BIND

If you plan to set up your own zones and run nameservers for them, you first need the BIND software. Even if you plan to have someone else run the nameservers for your zones, it’s helpful to have the software around. For example, you can use a local nameserver to test your zone datafiles ...