Name Servers

[Big Giant Head]

OK slightly n00bish question I guess but here goes

I've set up a dns server for our company that's now online, and we're mapping dns requests to it, and its then resolving them for people, this seems to work fine for our .co.uk stuff etc, however when we try and map the .com's we own to point at our dns it won't let us

My boss appears to think we need to register the server as a proper name server, is this true and if so how do we go about it?

I prolly phrased that really badly so if anyone is confused please tell me what I need to clarify

[Wizzo]

Well this is confusing ;)

I trust your company DNS server has a real IP which is static on the net? Once you've done this you'll need to setup primary zones on it for the domains, and go through the joy of repointing the domain entry with the registrar to point at your nameservers.

For example, if you have registered your .co.uk with 123-reg.co.uk so you login to their control panel, select change nameservers and then tell it the two new nameservers to become authoritative for that domain. Note that you must have both a primary and secondary to do this, so one DNS server isn't enough (and should never be considered enough for an organisation anyway).

Some domain registrars may charge a fee for this service, or not offer it at all. You'll need to find out who your company has registered all your domains with, and go through this process with each domain in turn. Note that it can take up to 48 hours, sometimes longer, for domain authority changes to propagate the internet.

If you need some secondary DNS hosting, I'm sure we could sort something out on the MPUK/Tsunami servers.

Need more info gimme a shout... been doing far too much of this DNS ****e over the past two months :)

[Wizzo]

Oh on another thing, is this DNS server purely for your internal DNS mappings, or intended for you to run your own Internet DNS server, or is it both? If it is for both make sure you have setup DNS forwarding to your ISPs main nameservers to take advantage of their cache for DNS queries your servers can't handle.

[Big Giant Head]

cheers m8, a quick bit of shouting across the desk and it appears we need a secondary dns server ;)

I've set up all the lookup zones and hosts etc, its the repointing that's being a bitch, some hosts allow only a primary dns while others throw a strop about having only 1

I love being properly trained so I can handle the companies critical infrastructure :rolleyes:

Spot the muppet who took the entire companies email down on friday by entering an IP and not a domain into the MX record :)

[Big Giant Head]

and its purely for our own internal dns

(thank god) ;)

[Big Giant Head]

OK then

The error when we try to change the DNS pointer is "Cannot verify existance of name server at <address>", the name server is there because some of our other sites are resolving through it atm

Tech supports response was to tell us to register the name server here:
http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/makechanges/itts/host

Does that mean anything to anyone?

[Wizzo]

This is the error you get when a registrar tries to change the DNS records, and does a forward lookup on the hostname you gave to ensure it exists. Given that it may take some time for this to propagate to other servers, it may not be finding the host and hence denying the change.

Registering the name server on the form given should speed things up considerably with netsol.

[robfult]

If you are not providing external dns access then there is no need to register your dns server with anyone. As wizzo said, you should have a primary and secondary server though there is no reason why a network cannot exist on a primary server so the secondary server may not be the acutal solution to yuor problems.

What software and o/s's are you using?

[Big Giant Head]

Its my bad on the definitions

The DNS is only supplying subdomain lookup on domains we own that are pointed to our dns server hence it is open to the net

It does not however do anything other than process those domains, hence the confusion between "internal" and "external"

My bad on that one, currently running on 2k Server using its built in DNS stuff

The DNS lookup to our name server has been changed over a week so it should have fully propagated, odd that it hasn't

[Big Giant Head]

OK beginning to unravel this now

I was finally given the address of the DNS that these people were trying to use to resolve our server to test it, and it appears that you guys were correct and the DNS hasn't propagated that far yet, despite my boss claiming its been well over a week and "should be fine"

Now just gotta figure out what a NIC handle (or rather which nic handles I need to retrieve) is so I can fill out that form and see if it helps speed the process along somewhat