Under this article you will come to know about the custom and private DNS and their importance to the resellers. You will also learn about anonymous staying, moving host, the working of DNS and the components which are involved in it.
Introduction:
The term custom DNS server and private DNS server are used and denoted to the resellers server that he uses to provide the DNS services to his clients and new customers. Any site owner has to register the domain name on the DNS server of the host so as it is easy to host the site on the server and the visitors and the customers can find it and should not face any problem. If you are a reseller then you can act like the real host but in fact you do not owe any personal infrastructure. As you are hiring the infrastructure from the real host, if you look from the view point of any site owner that he has hosted the site on your domain name but the DNS server belongs some one else as the owner has to use the real host server.
Unidentified Staying:
If you are a reseller then you would not like your customer know that you are selling some one else server and not your own. And if they by any means know it then they will reach directly towards the real host as they would not like to pay extra money for the same hosting that can be available to them in low price. If you as a reseller want to keep the actual infrastructure unidentified then do not prove any relation with the actual host to your customers basically regarding in services given. Custom DNS server are used for setting the DNS of the domain names and not the name of the DNS server that your real host has provided you. And this will help you as your customer will not be able to discover you as a reseller.
Moving Host:
If you are a reseller and you are moving your account to your own server hardware then there comes the actual importance of the custom DNS server. And with the help of DNS server you can change the IP addresses used with your custom DNS server to point to the new IP address on your server instead of forcing all your customers to change their domain names. Do not try to move your client’s website secretly when you can do it technically with the help of Custom DNS server and always tell your site owner about the migration. And if you are moving or migrating with the change of DNS server then also tell the truth to your customer. And this will help you in improving your business and you will get large number of site owners.
If you want to provide good and better services to your client as a reseller then you should use custom DNS server as additional software as your clients should not know that you are a reseller or the real provider. If you are a reseller web host i.e. you provide hosting to resellers and you do not provide custom DNS then the resellers will not come to you and will search some other provider. And you can assign your own custom DNS server as today there is no excuse to this.
Working of DNS:
The full form of DNS server is domain name server. It is very useful but hidden part of internet and it can also form the largest database on it. Every system which is attached to the network has a unique IP address which is of 32 bit and it is also uttered as 4 octets. And the user of the IP address is known as dotted decimal notation. For example a classic address looks like - 199.428.130.3
If you are asked to tell all the IP address of the sites you browsed today, it will be very difficult for you to recall all the IP addresses as you can not remember the long code of numbers. And all the IP addresses are defined by the domain names and this is the utility of the domain name. If want to open a site you need to remember the IP address and not the URL of that site. DNS includes the IP addresses and the related names.
Numbers and Names:
The work of DNS is to convert the name of the system to the IP address and also the vice versa. If it translates the IP address to the machine name then it is called reverse mapping. When ever you type http://www.xyz.com , the browser first search the IP address then the system moves forward to look the IP address through the directory service which is also known as the DNS. As you type the address then the system first ask for the IP address from the DNS server and then it connects the to other DNS server on the net. Hence you can say that the DNS is the global network of the server. And the interesting concept is this that no one updates the DNS and for this it is also called the disturbed database.
Components of DNS:
There are two components of DNS
Nameserver
Resolver
Nameserver: It works according to its name as its function is to look the name. Mostly there is only one name server for the group of systems. If the name server is unable to provide the requested information it will contact the other name server. But the entire name server can not make contact with the other server. Basically every name server can contact with its root server and with this the location of the other name server for the second level domain gets confirmed.
Resolver: This runs on the system of the client to start the DNS lookups it also contains with in it the list of the name servers. And we have already discussed about the name server above. There are three name servers- primary name server, secondary name server, caching name server. The secondary name server is used for backup purposes whereas the caching name server is used to give information about the names but it does not maintain any DNS database. But the thing to be noted is if you do any change to the primary name server it should be noted to secondary name server this is because the primary name server has all the database records are there in it and you can transmit the names through ‘zone transfer’.
Work of ‘Caching’:
The operations of DNS are performed through ‘caching’. When the name server requires needs mapping it catches this information. And if there are some more questions then they will use the cached records and reduces the cost of search. There is a element called TTL in the caching that decides for how long the server can cache the information. So as the name server caches get the IP address it also includes the TTL and the information comes for the limited time and it is automatically discarded.
When there is need of the IP address and is given DNS address, the information is asked from the local host and he dispel the address. This can be done in many different ways:
Table look up. On UNIX host, the table is /etc/hosts.
Now here the process is done with the local name server and it is named on the UNIX system.
It can also be done via sending the message to the remote system that is known from the information in the file/etc/resolve.conf.
If you need the information about the domain from the name server that is not server it sends the recommendation to the client by specifying better name server. This function is operated in a traditional manner where any request is passed by the DNS server, it is unable to handle it to the higher level server and so on, and this until the the root of DNS name space is forwarded.
The full domain name ladder is traversed through the pointer in the name server that connects other name server but host has to arrange the basic name server address. And now it is able to use DNS protocols to locate the name server.
Name Server Receives a Request:
When the request is made to the name server it can do only one thing to the following:
It can answer the request with the help of IP address, this method is called iterative.
With the help of user interface method called’nslookup’ which is available on UNIX.
Another method is internet engineering task force that is with DNS security extensions to DNS protocol.