An Acronym for Domain Name Service.
The glue that binds the InterNet together -- the Protocol that takes you from typing www.JRandomWebsite.com into your web browser to the InternetProtocol address of the site which would look something like 123.45.67.89 so that:
DNS does more than just that (a ForwardLookup) though -- there are different types of ResourceRecords. It is usually provided by a program called named(8) -- commonly a version of bind, the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon.
This is pasted here from a conversation on IRC because this information is important but I don't have time to sit down and write it up as a nice paragraph, it should also have it's facts verified:
<Isomer> people set up dns so that replies don't come from the same ip sometimes <quantum_> i wonder about this: client c sends a resquest to s1 <quantum_> which forwards the request to s2 <quantum_> but using a wierd packet so the reply goes right back to c <quantum_> bypassing s1 completely <Isomer> that doesn't happen <Isomer> it's more when you have a machine <Isomer> h1 <Isomer> with two interfaces i1 and i2 <quantum_> (which is just stupid, because then s1 cant cache) <Isomer> which have one unique IP each <Isomer> now the default route goes out i1 <Isomer> but i2 is the IP in DNS as the nameserver <Isomer> you send a query to i2, but when h1 creates a new packet and sends it <Isomer> the OS attaches i1 as the source address instead of i2 <Isomer> because it uses the IP of the interface that the packet leaves from <Isomer> see? <Isomer> this can't be easily fixed either, coz if you use the IP of i1 <Isomer> then people on i2 have the same issue <Isomer> bind fixes this by opening one port per interface <Isomer> hence why you see lots of :53's for bind <Isomer> but it can't bind to new port 53's when you bring up another interface after it's started and has dropped privileges <quantum_> ah <Isomer> so yeah <Isomer> I should wiki this <quantum_> yes <quantum_> because many things were just made clear <Isomer> which is why so many things have cone nat's <Isomer> because if they were restrictive nats <quantum_> all because recv() can tell you who sent the packet <Isomer> then you can't query some dns servers <quantum_> but not where it arrived in the machine. <Isomer> thats not the problem <Isomer> the problem is sending a packet with a specific source address <quantum_> im sure ive seen log messages about bind discovering new interfaces <quantum_> so they could leave a suid root child which communicates to its parent over unix domain socket <quantum_> to pass file descs <quantum_> and does nothing else, so is (hopefully) mostly secure <Isomer> you run bind as root? <quantum_> (maybe they do this, i dont admin any bind nameservers, nor have looked at the source)
More crud, from the deleted page about the A6 ResourceRecord:
I tried setting this up at home - debian woody, bind9. I could do host -t A6 $domain fine, and host -t A6 $host.$domain worked too, although it returned the fragment for the host and the domain name as part of the record - not what its supposed to do. Glibc under debian woody doesn't appear to support it, and its listed as a bug as of June 15 2003, tagged 'wishlist'. Pity too, as A6 addressing makes a LOT of sense for dynamic IP.
I had:
$ORIGIN element.tla. test 10 IN A6 0 2002:6to4:prefix:: $ORIGIN test.element.tla. helium 10 IN A6 0 ::1 test.element.tla.
which is how I interpreted the bind9 docs on setting up A6 addressing. If i'm doing this wrong let me know. -- 
DanielLawson
Some name servers (bind9?) support A6 -> AAAA translations, can this be enabled?
I can find no mention of this. Bind9 supports A6 addresses in full, which are essentially identical to AAAA addresses, but thats not what I want
Added here for lack of ideas about a better page to put it on.
Currently the .nz zone push occurs 6 times per day at the following times (in NZST/NZDT obviously)
See 
http://www.dnc.org.nz/story/30099.html for more information
See also:
RFC:1034 (Domain Names -- Concepts and Facilities)RFC:1035 (Domain Names -- Implementations and Specification)Part of CategoryDns, CategoryNetworking and CategoryProtocols
81 pages link to DNS:
