CHAPTER 39
Name Serving with the Domain Name
System (DNS)
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding Domain Names
Setting Up a DNS Server with BIND
ReferencesHumans enjoy naming things. We name our kids, our pets, and often
inanimate objects as well. Cars, boats, and computers are not immune.
Networked computers are very often named. Remembering names is easier
for most of us than remembering numbers. When we must remember
numbers, we can; I can still remember the phone number of the house I lived
in when I was a kid. However, when we can use a name instead, we tend to
prefer to do so; today I can’t remember my daughter’s cell phone number,
because it is programmed into my phone and I just select her picture in the
directory to call her.
If you are working in a data center, especially one with a large number of
servers networked together, you won’t easily remember the IP addresses of all
the systems. Besides, it is fun to pick a theme and name everything on the
network using that theme: varieties of apples, characters from your favorite
science fiction or fantasy world, brands of guitars you wish you owned. It’s
much more fun and easy to say, “Hey, Liz, can you go check on sontaran
for me? It isn’t responding to my ping requests,” than to say “...can you
check on the server at IP 192.168.2.46...?”
Mnemonic devices like these are useful, but we must map the names we give
to the numbers the systems actually use. Mapping is just matching,
connecting the words with the numbers in a way that allows a human to
request http://google.com and get the information stored at
http://74.125.224.72.