Name Server Operations Guide for BIND Release 4.9.5 Releases from 4.9 Paul Vixie1 <
[email protected]> Internet Software Consortium La Honda, CA Releases through 4.8.3 Kevin J. Dunlap2 Michael J. Karels Computer Systems Research Group Computer Science Division Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 1. Introduction The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) implements an Internet name server for BSD-derived operating systems. The BIND consists of a server (or ‘‘daemon’’) called named and a resolver library. A name server is a network service that enables clients to name resources or objects and share this information with other objects in the network. This in effect is a distributed data base system for objects in a computer network. The BIND server runs in the background, servicing queries on a well known network port. The standard port for UDP and TCP is specified in /etc/services. The resolver is a set of routines residing in a system library that provides the interface that programs can use to access the domain name services. BIND is fully integrated into BSD (4.3 and later releases) network programs for use in storing and retrieving host names and address. The system administrator can configure the system to use BIND 1 This author was employed by Digital Equipment Corporation’s Network Systems Laboratory during the development and re- lease of BIND 4.9. Release 4.9.2 was sponsored by Vixie Enterprises. Releases from 4.9.3 were sponsored by the Internet Software Consortium. 2 This author was an employee of Digital Equipment Corporation’s ULTRIX Engineering Advanced Development Group and was on loan to CSRG when this work was done.