Re: Telnet/Winblows. Benefits of DNS etc.

[Matthew John Palmer <nospam [at] uow.edu.au>]

On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Martin P Holland wrote:

> >wouldn't bother setting up a caching name server, it's not really worth the
> 
> I'm using a cacheing-only DNS nameserver here (with just one machine). The big
> advantage for me is that it makes it easy to switch between different ISPs. The
> point being that if you plonk some new nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf then
> applications using the resolv library in libc to do lookups (i.e. pretty
> much everything) will happily carry on using the old contents of
> /etc/resolv.conf.

Agreed, that is a good reason to run a nameserver.  However, if you're
running a forwarding NS (the only way I have really managed to get a NS
working over a temporary link) then you still need to change forwarders when
you change ISPs, and then restart named.  Admittedly that's less of a hassle
than killing everything off and starting again.

The other possibility - a full-blown nameserver (with a hints file and so
forth) does not work satisfactorily for temporary links, in my experience. 
The problem is that the NS needs to get a new list of master nameservers
every once in a while - and it has a prime fit if it can't.  You need to
have the link up whenever named wants the server list, otherwise it gets
mightly upset.

If you've got any suggestions for how to fix this problem, I'd love to hear
them.


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Matthew Palmer
mjp16@uow.edu.au

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