[NTLUG:Discuss] Registrars and DNS

[Bug Hunter]

  Here is an overview of how DNS resolution works.

  George types "http://www.cnn.com".  George's computer asks the DNS
server set in /etc/resolv.conf what the IP address of www.cnn.com is.  The
DNS server asks a root server which machine knows about cnn.com.  The Root
server replies with Cnn's DNS server number stored in the Domain Name
Registry entry.  Then, George's DNS server asks the CNN DNS server what
the ip address is for www.cnn.com.  The answer returned is saved for the
amount of time the CNN server has in it. The next time that George's
computer asks for the number, the DNS server pulls it out of memory, if
the Time To Live for the number has not yet expired.

  I actually left out one step.  Georges' DNS server usually verifies the
DNS entries for CNN, allowing CNN to redirect George's DNS server to the
correct ones for that domain.  This allows you to set up subdomains
managed by other DNS servers.

  So, you can't do what you want.  I understand there is a dyndns.com
(.org?) out ther that may be able to help you.

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Swapan Sarkar wrote:

> I have a basic question related to domain names but
> hope it is not stupid.
> 
> When I register for a domain name, the registry also
> stores the DNS servers and their IP address which will
> resolve the domain. Can it point to a static IP
> address, which does not run a DNS server like
> bind/djbns but resolves using /etc/hosts file and it
> is inside an ISP domain. (ISP = home.com, mydomain =
> domain.org) How will this server resolve the external
> domain names (can it still keep the ISP DNS server for
> resolution) ?
> 
> TIA
> Swapan