Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

DNS

Synopsis

Stands for Domain Name System (DNS), a TCP/IP client/server protocol used as a naming system for network hosts.

Description

DNS provides both a system for logically naming computers on an IP network and a way of resolving logical hostnames into their associated IP addresses (and vice versa). DNS is intimately associated with Windows 2000’s Active Directory and is important for two reasons:

• DNS is the naming system used for naming Windows 2000 domains. In Windows NT, domains had NetBIOS names that had nothing to do with DNS. For example, a Windows NT domain called HEADQUARTERS could have the DNS domain name mtit.com. In Windows 2000, the situation is different: mtit.com would be both the DNS domain name and the Windows 2000 domain name of mtit.com. This simplifies things but also complicates them, for you could easily implement Windows NT domains without regard to DNS. But in Windows 2000 using DNS is not optional.

• DNS is also used by Windows 2000 as its domain-locator service. In other words, Active Directory uses DNS for locating hosts on the network, and especially for locating domain controllers so that clients can log on to a Windows 2000 domain. We could say that DNS is the “service locator” for Active Directory services, since services such as ldap, dcs, and so on are stored in special subdomains that can be searched by Windows 2000 systems.

Let’s be clear about the difference between a DNS domain and a Windows 2000 domain:

DNS domain

Identifies a managed portion ...