[TriLUG] DNS makes my head hurt..

[Aaron S. Joyner]

Brian Henning wrote:

>Ok, remember how I was setting up some named virtual hosts for a nonprofit?
>Now I'm working with the fellow that holds the registration of the domain
>name.  I told him to alias his domain to strutmasters.net; that way, as long
>as we keep our domain name registration up-to-date, his is automatically
>up-to-date as well.  He replied and said:
>"All I need is the name servers, NS1 and NS2 are they both strutmasters.net
>this is the only way that it can be done at register" [sic]
>Which one of us is confused?  I have very little domain registration
>experience, but the times I've ever registered any domain, it's been tell
>the people the name and the IP and they take care of it; I've never been
>asked about name servers.  I thought name servers were the realm of the dns
>provider?
>So if I'm the confused one here, what's the right answer to his question?
>"Yes"?
>If he's the confused one, what do I tell him to clear things up?
>
>  
>
Well it sounds like you're coming into this with different assumptions.  
He's treating them only as a registrar, and you're expecting DNS 
services from them as well.  If you are running DNS servers, with valid 
zone files for his domain, then you can provide the appropriate IP 
addresses for him to configure his domain name with his registrar.  On 
the other hand, you're expecting him to have both a registrar and a DNS 
provider, and you will provide him with the IP address to setup in his 
DNS server (which that service is often provided by the registrar as 
well).  I'm pressed for time so I can't provide a more in depth answer, 
but that should get you started.  One or the other of you will need to 
be doing DNS.

Aaron S. Joyner