setting up DNS in win2000

[zod]

Hi folks.

Ok, i've set up my happy little LAN, and have a computer that I would like to set up as a web server.
I have win2000 Advanced Server on it, and have opened the DNS and WWW ports on my router.
I have a domain registered, lets call it www.confused.com

I started going through the win2000 DNS wizard and got in a bit over my head.
Has anyone done this and can tell me what settings to use to set up the computer to point to www.confused.com to my IP?

As soon as questions like type the network ID of the name or zone came up i got confused

Thanks.

Also, for a secondary DNS, can I use another DNS server? How will that DNS server "know" that www.confused.com should point to my IP address?

 

[rootaxs]

Hi Zod,

Well, you gotta know the zone dude. ;-)

Seriously, for the basics of basics... set up A records for your domain at least. Step by step do this:

1) Go to Forward Lookup Zones
2) Right click and create a new zone
3) Choose Standard Primary, next
4) Name for zone should be "confused.com"
5) click next
6) click next (yep)
7) click "finished"
8) go to the domain, right click and click "Other new records"
9) click "Create record" (at this point "A" should be selected)
10) specify your IP, leave everything else intact, click OK

At this point you should have your DNS ready to answer and point to IIS where IIS will take over and bring up the proper site to the visitor.

As for Secondary DNS, you can use the same PC for it but that doesn't make sense. You're better off setting up another PC to act as secondary or to use one of those free DNS services to act as secondary. For them to know, you create an account with them and then specify to query your primary DNS for records. It should all be transparent to everyone thereon.

Questions? still confused? Just ask.

 

[rootaxs]

Btw, there's a lot more to it than i've presented so instead of writing a pretty long tutorial for it just ask and i or one of the better AT's will answer along the way.

 

[zod]

so far so good rootaxs, but when I am running through the wizard, it also asks me if i want to create a Reverse lookup zone.

If I click yes, it asks if I want to make a Standard Primary one.

Then it asks me what the network ID or the name of the zone is
and prompts me for ___.___.___.xxx

what should I be putting in for that?

 

[bex0rs]

<< what should I be putting in for that? >>



The first three octets of your IP address. For example, if your IP is 192.168.1.2, you would want to type 192.168.1 when it asks you that. This is for reverse lookup purposes so that if you run something like:


<< nslookup 192.168.1.2 >>


your name server will respond by giving you the canonical name corresponding to that IP.

Check out the DNS section on Windows2000faq.com for some more useful information.

~bex0rs

 

[rootaxs]

Another thing to consider, if you're on a Cable or DSL connection chances are your provider/ISP won't allow you to do reverse DNS. As such just keep it blank... no need to deal with it.

 

[NEO5]

Check this website out.

DSL/Cable Webserver

 

[zod]

Ok.
I skipped the reverse lookup part... but when I click &quot;Other New Records&quot;, i get a lot of choices (three of which start with an A

AFS Database
Alias
ATM Address

as well as a few others

 

[zod]

also, one more question... if i use zoneEdit for my secondary DNS server, which server should i use the ns1 or ns2 (or can i specify to them that i only need a secondary DNS?)

 

[rootaxs]

A records is used to point to an IP (e.g. point WWW to xxx.xxx.xxx.123)
MX records are for Mail Exchange records
CNAME is like an alias (e.g. CNAME WWW to TEST, so that entering TEST.confused.com and WWW.confused.com goes to the same place... you can also use A records for this)
NS for nameserver pointers

Those are the basics that you need to get started, most especially A, NS and MX records.

I don't really understand your second q <g>

 

[zod]

Ok. Everything looks good.

Now... is all this worth it?
Should I just use ZoneEdit's DNS servers (they offer free DNS).
Or should I just say, use their secondary DNS server (ns2.zoneedit.com) and the one I just made as a primary (or visa versa).

Does running this take a large amount of bandwidth, memory, or network traffic?

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[rootaxs]

Well, if you're thinking of the experience and knowledge gained in learning how to use it... by all means it's worth it.

If i were you i'd use your own DNS for primary and ZoneEdit's for secondary primarily so that you can easily edit your info on the fly without going to ZE's site.

Not sure how heavy it will be on your network but base it on my own little server... got 80 sites, two servers doing Mail/FTP/WWW/DNS. Don't recall the actual hit count lately but those combined (especially the mail traffic) does around 5-8GB/mo of traffic (both ways) on a 768k line.

Last month was the best in terms of traffic so far, had to host a mirror for a pro-consumer site back in my country and that site alone did 40 GB of traffic in 3 weeks.