*BSD News Article 97101


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#! rnews 2901 bsd
From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@portsoft.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: DNS on 2.1.7  Question
Date: 4 Jun 1997 19:26:28 GMT
Organization: Portland Software
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Michelle Brownsworth <michelle@primelogic.com> wrote in article
<michelle-0306971811480001@monalisa.primelogic.com>...
> In article <338cf211.7815569@167.152.149.11>, joe@genesis.netsitesys.com
wrote:
> 
> > I am trying to set up DNS on our FreeBsd Box (2.1.7), and have 2
> > questions:
> > 
> > (1) Our provider will only provide us with (for now) a 1/4 Class C
> > address block.  How do I set the lines in named.boot to reflect this,
> > especially IN-ADDR-ARPA?
> 
> Your named.boot file will not reflect anything special beyond listing the
> hosts that have been assigned IP numbers you were allocated from the
> partial C-block, and pointing named to the zone files for these hosts, as
> usual.
> 
> Regarding the reverse, or IN-ADDR-ARPA, for your partial C-block, forget
> it.  The reverse for your numbers needs to be done, certainly, but you
> will not be the one to do it; your provider owns the C-block and is
> responsible for doing the reverse for your IP addresses.  Therefore, in

Not so fast, here.  There still is quite a lot of value in providing
reverse address records, presumably your hosts on the inside will be using
your DNS to lookup IP numbers, not someone else's, and services many times
use reverse address lookups.  There is no reason to send additional DNS
traffic out your Internet connection link.  The thing is that you just need
to understand that if you do this that hosts on the Internet won't see
these records, they will only see your ISP's records.

What a lot of people do in this situation is tell their ISP to do two or
three reverse mappings, such as the main mailserver, primary router, the
sorts of things that will never change.  Then, they do much more extensive
internal reverse records.  This is particularly apt if your DNS on the
inside is the primary DNS, the whole point of running your own primary is
so you don't have to send e-mail or call your ISP for every little niggling
host DNS change.  If your depending on your ISP for reverse address
records, your going to end up doing this which defeats the point of running
your own primary in the first place.

Ted