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All hosts on the Internet, or any TCP/IP network for that matter, have an assigned 32-bit IP address. Most hosts have a name, as well, since host names are easier to remember than host addresses. The Domain Name System (DNS) is the distributed database that contains the names and addresses of all reachable hosts on a TCP/IP subnet, including the Internet.

Most, but not all, Internet service providers (ISPs) will set up and maintain the DNS information for their customers.

Linux system administrators should learn traditional DNS. Front-ends and quick templates to setup domain records have a place in managing sites. When confronted with DNS configurations already in existence, nothing can substitute for knowing and using the fundamentals.

This article will show you how to build a complete DNS System with Debian. This includes a Master server, a Slave server, DDNS, and a bunch of DNSSEC. I'll be using BIND 9 for the server.

In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS, a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. This has the advantage that you can easily use web-based frontends to administrate your DNS records. You could even write your own frontend, e.g. using PHP, to interact with the MyDNS database. MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted!