[Info-vax] DNS Services and Servers, Hosts Files, search order, resolvers (was Re: If interested with ! For your home and professional networks)

[Stephen Hoffman]

That was a spammy-looking subject line, Phillip.

On 2013-04-22 17:38:43 +0000, Philippe.vouters at laposte.net said:

> http://vouters.dyndns.org/tima/Windows-Unix-OpenVMS-DNS-Comparing_DNS_search_order_between_operating_systems.html 
> 
> 
> This document mainly focuses onto hostnames lookup order by three 
> different operating systems.

It's probably easiest to register a domain and to run DNS services on the LAN.

DNS was invented because maintaining those hosts files was a headache, 
after all.

FWIW, various operating systems also only read the host file when their 
(caching) DNS resolver is starting up, too.  In the case of OS X 
Server, there's a HUP signal you can send the mDNSResolver to ask it to 
dump and reload its cache.

What to use in place of the hosts files?  Well, use a DNS server, or 
two.  Windows Server is pretty good at DNS services, and OS X Server, 
Linux, BSD and various other operating systems can all provide DNS 
services.  Yes, OpenVMS can certainly provide DNS services, though 
involving older revisions of BIND and with a low-level 
configuration-file-based user interface.  While you're adding DNS 
services, add in user authentication via Active Directory or Open 
Directory or otherwise, and you can have single sign-on, too.

I've been using OS X Server for DNS for quite a while, and have some 
detailed postings introducing DNS services in general, and on the OS X 
Server platform.

Running a DNS server on a Mac Mini, a PC Engines board, or a plug 
computer is low power and low noise, too.  While DNS needs to be 
continually available, a home network requires negligible processor 
power and storage.

Yes, you can use a made-up domain, but for US$10 per year, or less, you 
can have a real and registered domain.  Or use a subdomain of a domain 
you've already registered.  Just do avoid using .local or any domain 
you didn't register.  And FWIW, .private is not among the RFC or 
ICANN-reserved domains.


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