Domain Name Service
Introduction to DNSThe Domain Naming System allows you to specify computers by their names instead of their numbers. For example, if you specified your name at an employee management system, it is automatically converted to your Employee ID at input. This is exactly how the DNS service works.
Try using the ping command to ping your local IP address by typing ping 127.0.0.1. Now, this is just an example but you specified your own computer with the 127.0.0.1 address. If you have about a hundred computer, it would be tough to memorize each and every IP address so we have names for every computer. To perform the ping operation with a name instead of an IP address, type ping localhost. This looks up a file stored on the hard disk for static mappings for the name localhost and finds its mapping to the IP address 127.0.0.1. Now, IP addresses are not always static, especially where a DHCP service is involved and therefore a DNS server can be setup in the network. The Windows 2000 DHCP server can register the names and IP addresses of computers when it grants them a lease to an IP address and can therefore keep the DNS database up-to-date.
The Windows 2000 DNS Server allows you to create 3 types of zones or DNS databases. They are:
A Standard Primary Zone is a writable master copy that is replicated to the readonly backup copy called the Standard Secondary Zone. This means that if the server containing the Standard Primary Zone ever goes down, no new registrations can take place for that DNS domain. You may create only one Standard Primary Zone per DNS domain, but you can create as many Standard Secondary Zones as required.
An Active Directory-integrated zone does to DNS what the Active Directory does to the directory services; the Active Directory integrated zone allows a DNS domain to have multiple writable copies of the DNS database. This type of zone also reduces administrative effort as the replication of the DNS database and the replication of the Active Directory is performed as a single unit and therefore does not have to be managed separately.
I'm leaving out the step-by-step tutorials because Windows 2000 has a user-friendly environment where its easy to figure stuff out. If you need any help with this stuff, just send me an email at: kid1983@yahoo.com