[aclug-L] Re: DNS-domain name for home network?

[Jonathan Hall <jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, May 27, 2000 at 11:08:42PM -0500, Carl D Cravens wrote:
> On Sat, 27 May 2000, Jonathan Hall wrote:
> 
> > yes... you can do that... but IMHO, DNS is much easier... at least once it's
> > working (and getting it working for a private LAN really isn't that hard--I
> > did it years ago before I even really had a clue what DNS was for).
> 
> "Once it's working" is the key phrase. 
> 
> > If you have more than just a couple machines, DNS quickly becomes easier to
> > administrate... and it becomes easier faster when you have Windows or other
> > non-Unix OSes, too.
> 
> How difficult is it to copy a file to a few machines?  Harder than setting
> up bind?  I don't think so.  And how many times is that host file going to
> change?  Is it going to change so often that copying the hosts file around
> is ultimatly more time consuming than setting up Bind?  Heck, the time it
> would take to read the DNS-HOWTO probably exceeds the amount of time any
> hobbiest is going to spend copying files around. 

That depends on quite a number of factors.

1) What OS(es) are involved?  Copying between unicies can be easily
automated with a cron job... or even just a simple script you run yourself. 
Between Windows and Unix is a bit more difficult...  Add other OSes and you
add an unknown number of unknown variables.

2) How static is the network?  If it never changes, hosts file(s) may be
fine.  If it changes often (as mine has for years--long before I had a
static IP address of my own), then DNS quickly becomes more effecient.

3) DNS has other advantages over a hosts file... The greatest is probaly the
ability to cache external DNS queries.  This can be done in addition to the
hosts file, mind you... so it's not necissarly an either-or situation...

Even so... setting up bind for a private configuration is really not
difficult.  It doesn't need to even be done "by the book" to work for a
private setup (if it's public, you want to be sure that it's "right" so you
don't cause other people headaches, tho).  Like I said... I set up DNS by
reading the DNS-HOWTO back in my Slackware days, when kernel 1.2.13 was the
hot thing.  I had no clue what I was doing, really... but it was painless. 
It's not a difficult process to set up a simple private DNS server.  And it
saves a lot of headaches (IMHO), in the future, whenever you make changes or
add another machine.

In short, I would say, use DNS if any of the following are true:

1. You have more than 4 or 5 machines on your network
2. You have more than 2 operating systems on your network
3. You add or change the computers (or their names) on average, more than
   once every two months.

If none of those are true, using the hosts file may be simpler for you
(altho, I would argue still that it's not "a lot" simpler--just marginally)


> If you want to play around, fine.  But my money's on setting up the hosts
> file and getting back to work.  


--
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the left hand.
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