This is the definitive book on the Domain Name System (DNS), the powerful scheme that facilitates the translation of English-like domain names (www.amazon.com) into computer-comprehensible Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (208.216.182.15). If you run a DNS server of any kind, particularly under Unix, you need to have this book on hand.

This book's early chapters give a view of DNS from high altitude, explaining basic concepts such as domains, name servers, and name resolution. From there, the authors proceed on a more practical tack, presenting specific instructions for setting up your own domain and DNS server using BIND. The authors then tell you what to do as your domain grows and you need to add more machines, subdomains, and greater throughput capacity. They also talk a lot about nslookup and C programming with the various DNS and BIND libraries. Administrators will find the chapter on BIND debugging output particularly helpful. Here, the authors translate BIND's mysterious error messages and offer specific strategies for fixing and optimizing the program. This edition covers BIND 8.1.2, but pays lots of attention to older versions that are still in wide use (4.8.3 and 4.9). The authors are careful to note differences among the versions.