TECHNICAL REFERENCE

DNS and
Windows
2000
Sean Daily
Gary C. Kessler
Robert McIntosh
Mark Minasi
John Savill
Tao Zhou
i

Windows & .Net Magazine Technical Reference

A Guide to DNS and Windows 2000

By Mark Minasi, Gary C. Kessler, Robert McIntosh,

Sean Daily, Tao Zhou, and John Savill

A Division of Penton Media

 ii

Copyright 2004
Windows & .NET Magazine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form by an electronic or mechanical means (including
photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.

It is the reader’s responsibility to ensure procedures and

techniques used from this book are accurate and appropriate
for the user’s installation. No warranty is implied or expressed.

ISBN 1-58304-504-X
iii

About the Authors

Mark Minasi (http://www.minasi.com/gethelp) is a contributing editor for Windows IT Pro, an
MCSE, and the author of Mastering Windows 2000 Server, 4th Edition (Sybex).
He writes and speaks around the world about Win2K and Windows NT networking.

Gary C. Kessler ([email protected]) is a consultant and the program coordinator of the net-
working major at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.

Robert McIntosh ([email protected]) is a consultant and trainer who teaches

about Microsoft and security technologies and is the founder of Covenant Solutions. He is an MCT,
an MCSE, and an ISS-certified instructor.

Sean Daily ([email protected]) is a senior contributing editor for Windows IT Pro and the
CEO of Realtimepublishers.com. His most recent books are The Definitive Guide series
(http://www.realtimepublishers.com).

Tao Zhou ([email protected]) is a contributing editor for Windows IT Pro and an Internet
services engineer for a networking company with headquarters in New Jersey. He is an MCSE, a
Master CNE, and holds a master’s degree in computer science.

John Savill ([email protected]) is a qualified consultant in England and an MCSE. He is the

author of The Windows NT and Windows 2000 Answer Book (Addison Wesley), and manages the
Windows 2000 FAQ Web site (http://www.windows2000FAQ.com).
 iv

A Division of Penton Media

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1: A DNS Primer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

DNS Names and Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Registering a Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Meeting the New Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Using the Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Zones vs. Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Locating Mail Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Primary and Secondary DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
DNS and Windows 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Microsoft’s DNS Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
In Your Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Chapter 2: How DNS Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Obtaining Names and Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
IP Addressing in the Modern Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Sidebar: Subnetting and Variable-Length Subnet Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Registering Domain Names in the Internet’s Commercial Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
DNS Internals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Tools to Examine DNS and Domain Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Chapter 3: Win2K DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

The Workings of WINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
The Differences in DDNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Chapter 4: DNS and Active Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Choosing a DNS Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Sidebar: DNS Zone Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Using Caching-Only Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Centralizing Cache with Forwarders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Using Split-Brain DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Using Slave Servers to Protect Intranet Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Fitting into an Existing DNS Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Uprooting DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
v

Chapter 5: Navigating Name Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

An Equal Opportunity Annoyer . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Resolution Rudiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
The Four Node Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
B-node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
P-node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
M-node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
H-node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
DNS Where You Least Expect It . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Sidebar: Getting Under the Hood with a Network Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
PPTP and Other Problems . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Exceptions to the Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
But Wait—There’s More . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Good HOSTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Use WINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
New Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
Sidebar: Name-Resolution Resources . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Knowledge Is Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

Chapter 6: Troubleshooting DNS-Related AD Logon Problems . . . . . . . . . . . .40

Finding a DNS Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Troubleshooting AD Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
The Origin of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
A Lack of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Adding a Second DC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Building It Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44

Chapter 7: Scavenging Stale DNS Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46

A Time to Live . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
And a Time to Scavenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Scavenging Periods and Refresh Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Setting Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48

Chapter 8: Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

SRV Records in Win2K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
DDNS in Win2K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Option 1: Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
Option 2: Coexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
Option 3: Only UNIX DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
Ready, Set, Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
 vi

Chapter 9: Maximizing BIND DNS Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

DNSSEC Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
The SIG RR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
The KEY RR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
The NXT RR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Using DNSSEC in BIND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Generating Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Creating a Keyset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Signing the Child Zone’s Keyset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Signing the Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Using TSIG in BIND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Sidebar: A Secure Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
Looking Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Chapter 10: DNS FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67

Q. How do I rename a Windows 2000 domain’s DNS name? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Q. How do I stop my Windows domain controllers (DCs) from dynamically
registering DNS names? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Q. How do I stop DNS cache pollution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Q. How do I clone Windows DNS zone files? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
Q. What is the proper use of CNAME records? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Q. Why does an Active Directory (AD)-integrated DNS server take longer to
start than a typical zone-based DNS server? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
Q. In a multiple DNS server environment, how do I configure the DNS servers
to resolve both local and remote hosts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
Q. How do I tell which boot method my DNS service uses? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
Q. How do I create a chaching-only DNS server? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
 1

Introduction
DNS is the most important technology to understand in today’s networking environment. At the
most basic level, DNS resolves IP addresses to human-readable names. Although computers can
easily deal with numeric identifiers such as IP addresses (e.g., 10.255.200.10), people tend to have
trouble remembering more than a couple of these identifiers. The TCP/IP DNS protocol lets you
associate numeric IP addresses with people-friendly names such as www.winnetmag.com. This
essential name-resolution service is one of the core technologies that enabled the Internet’s rapid
growth by letting people easily locate networked resources.

In addition to providing name-resolution support, DNS has evolved into an essential part of the
Microsoft Windows networking infrastructure. When Windows NT was the primary Windows OS,
DNS was an optional technology—used mainly by organizations with an established UNIX system
base. Windows 2000 and Active Directory (AD) brought DNS into the mainstream. Win2K com-
pletely incorporated TCP/IP for all aspects of networking, allowing Windows network administra-
tors to drop the old NetBIOS protocol that NT used as a transport and for name resolution. With
NetBIOS gone, Win2K moved to TCP/IP’s DNS protocol for network name resolution. Microsoft
didn’t stop halfway in adopting DNS and TCP/IP: DNS is an essential part of AD, and AD com-
pletely depends on a functional DNS implementation.

To use DNS effectively, you need to understand its core components. This book starts with a basic
foundation for understanding DNS. Chapter 1 offers a DNS primer that introduces DNS compo-
nents and explains how they interact. Chapter 2 dives a bit deeper to explain exactly how DNS
works. Chapter 3 explains the difference between DNS and WINS, as well as some of the DNS
extensions that AD uses. Chapter 4 tackles more advanced DNS considerations, such as integrating
UNIX and Linux with AD, using DNS cache with forwarders, and using backup DNS servers.
Chapter 5 focuses on how the Windows OS uses WINS and DNS to perform name resolution. The
book concludes with real-world DNS implementation and troubleshooting information. Chapter 6
covers using Nslookup to troubleshoot AD logon problems that DNS configuration errors can
cause. In Chapter 7 you learn about scavenging orphaned DNS records created by dynamic DNS
(DDNS). Chapter 8 presents an in-depth guide to integrating UNIX and Windows DNS services.
Chapter 9 discusses the issues involved in securing DNS. Finally, the book concludes with some
DNS-related FAQs.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

2 DNS and Windows 2000

Chapter 1

A DNS Primer
—by Mark Minasi

You might say DNS is an optional feature in Windows NT 4.0. Neither NT nor NT domains rely on
DNS. In fact, most organizations running DNS servers don’t run those servers on NT—they use
UNIX, DNS’s traditional OS home. You could theoretically complete an NT 4.0 MCSE certification
without strong DNS knowledge.
Windows 2000 offers a different scenario for DNS. If a Win2K workstation needs to find a par-
ticular file share on a server, the workstation looks up the server’s name in DNS to find the
server’s network address. Win2K workstations look in DNS to find a domain controller (DC) that
they can log on to. (Win2K machines also use DNS to find Global Catalog—GC—servers—another
important ingredient to logging on.) Finally, if a workstation must choose from a selection of DCs,
DNS helps the workstation find a DC that is nearby rather than one that is a WAN communication
away.
DNS is central to Win2K domains’ functionality. To use DNS effectively, you need to under-
stand some DNS fundamentals, such as DNS names and addresses, name registration, the DNS
hierarchy, primary and secondary DNS servers, and DNS’s integration with Active Directory (AD).

DNS Names and Addresses

Every computing device on the Internet has a unique 32-bit IP address (e.g., 154.23.17.8). When
you run Internet-savvy programs, you can refer to these devices by their IP address. For example,
you can point your Web browser to http://68.15.149.117 to access my Web site. However, most of
us prefer to point our Web browser to a more human-friendly name such as http://www.minasi
.com. The ability to use human-friendly names requires a database that can convert www.minasi
.com to 68.15.149.117. Converting names to addresses is called name resolution.
Because few machines existed on the Internet in its early days, Internet-attached machines
handled name resolution via a simple ASCII table—a HOSTS file—that listed IP addresses and
machine names. (TCP/IP software still lets you place a HOSTS file on your system, but you prob-
ably won’t ever need to use one.) Since 1984, machines on the Internet have chiefly used DNS to
resolve names. Imagine needing to maintain on your computer a HOSTS file that not only contains
the names of hundreds of millions of computers but also changes daily. With DNS, you don’t need
to worry about such a scenario.
As the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 952 defines, a
computer’s DNS name consists of several parts separated by periods. For example,
www.minasi.com consists of www, minasi, and com. Each part can use no more than 24 charac-
ters. The only RFC-approved characters that can go into those name parts are the letters a through
z, the numerals 0 through 9, the dash or minus character, and the period that connects the name’s

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 1 A DNS Primer 3

components. In addition, Win2K uses DNS names that use the underscore character—a feature that
will affect your choice of DNS servers.

Registering a Name
To register a domain name, you can go to a central organization called Network Solutions
(http://www.networksolutions.com). Network Solutions uses many computers to run an Oracle
database that keeps track of millions of registered domain names. You can go to the company’s
Web site and query those computers to find out whether someone has registered a particular
domain name (e.g., acme.com). Because name registration has become decentralized, you can also
register a domain name with groups other than Network Solutions.
DNS’s greatest strength is its hierarchically distributed nature. A query of Network Solutions’
database will show that someone has registered the name acme.com, but the database won’t yield
any information about that domain. Network Solutions’ computers can’t tell you whether a partic-
ular computer in the acme.com domain exists—for example, you can’t find out whether a com-
puter named wile-e-coyote.acme.com or meepmeep.acme.com exists. Even if those computers
existed, Network Solutions couldn’t give you their IP addresses. Network Solutions neither knows
nor cares about what goes on inside acme.com, and therein lies the beauty of the hierarchical
system. To function, Network Solutions needs only the names of a few acme.com contact people,
and the names and IP addresses of two computers that will act as DNS servers in that domain.
Suppose the domain name acme.com is still available, and you decide to register it with Net-
work Solutions. You’d first give Network Solutions the names and IP addresses of two computers
running some kind of DNS server. The computers could be machines inside the acme.com net-
work, or you could simply pay your ISP to keep your DNS data on one of the ISP’s DNS servers.
(One machine can act as a DNS server for many DNS domains.) You decide to run one of these
DNS servers locally on a machine called names.acme.com (IP address 217.44.93.5) and pay your
ISP to run the other. The ISP puts your domain’s DNS information on a server named ns2.safety-
net.net (120.10.20.15). In DNS terms, those two DNS servers are authoritative for the acme.com
domain.
With the correct software, any computer that runs TCP/IP can be a DNS server. The most
popular implementation is UNIX’s Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND), but I’ve seen imple-
mentations on IBM’s mainframes and midrange systems, Digital’s (now Compaq’s) VAX systems,
NT, and OS/2. DNS server implementations for DOS might exist. For the purpose of this chapter, I
assume you’re running DNS server software on NT.
Now suppose you create machines in the acme.com domain with names such as
roadrunner.acme.com, www.acme.com, or coyote.acme.com. Remember, you don’t need to tell
Network Solutions about roadrunner, www, and coyote—the company doesn’t care. Rather, you
give the information to the two acme.com DNS servers (which you told Network Solutions about).
Both DNS servers keep a database of information, called a zone file, about acme.com.

Meeting the New Host

The method you use to add a record that describes a new computer—a new host, in DNS termi-
nology—to a DNS server’s zone file varies according to the DNS server software that you’re run-
ning. Most DNS servers use zone files that are ASCII files, so simple file editing would inform a

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

4 DNS and Windows 2000

DNS server of the new machine in town. Other DNS server implementations (e.g., in Win2K and
NT 4.0) offer GUI front ends.
Recently designed DNS server software doesn’t require you to inform the software about a
new host because the software follows a standard called dynamic DNS (DDNS). RFC 2136
describes DDNS in detail. In a DDNS-compliant network, computers can introduce themselves to
DNS without requiring an administrator to add the new computers to the DNS zone files.

Using the Hierarchy

After the acme.com DNS servers have the records for roadrunner, www, and coyote in place, you
can see how the DNS hierarchy works. Suppose someone from a domain named products.com
points a Web browser to www.acme.com. That browser asks the local domain’s DNS server for
www.acme.com’s IP address. The products.com DNS server doesn’t know the answer, but it
knows about 13 DNS servers (which Network Solutions and other organizations operate) that
know the names and addresses of the DNS servers for each Internet domain. These servers, which
are at the root of the DNS tree, are called root servers. The products.com DNS server asks one of
the 13 root servers for www.acme.com’s IP address. The root server responds that it doesn’t know
but that the machines that would know are the two authoritative DNS servers for the acme.com
domain—the machines with IP addresses 217.44.93.5 and 120.10.20.15. So, the products.com local
DNS server opens hailing frequencies to 217.44.93.5 and again asks for www.acme.com’s IP
address. The machine at 217.44.93.5 responds with www.acme.com’s address, and the name reso-
lution is complete.

Zones vs. Domains

You can further extend DNS’s hierarchy. Suppose you have a West Coast office and an East Coast
office. Each office wants to run a local DNS server. To accommodate the two offices, you can add
a level to acme.com’s machine names: Instead of ending with acme.com, each machine’s name
ends with westcoast.acme.com or eastcoast.acme.com. Each DNS server has a DNS domain subsec-
tion (or zone, in DNS jargon). The central acme.com DNS server now keeps the names of only a
few hosts. In addition, it keeps track of the fact that two zones now exist, and it stores the names
and addresses of the authoritative DNS servers for those zones.
Thus, if the machine named roadrunner is at the West Coast office, the machine gets the name
roadrunner.westcoast.acme.com. The offices have separate DNS servers, so a name resolution
query from outside the organization would require another round of DNS server queries. A prod-
ucts.com DNS server that wants to retrieve roadrunner.westcoast.acme.com’s IP address would first
query Network Solutions for the addresses of the acme.com DNS servers. The main acme.com
DNS server, unable to provide the IP address, would direct the products.com DNS server to the
main acme.com DNS server. The main acme.com DNS server, recognizing that the query is about
a West Coast machine, refers the query to the specific DNS server for the West Coast. Finally, that
West Coast DNS server gives the products.com DNS server the IP address of westcoast.acme.com’s
DNS server.
The name structure is completely hierarchical. When you separated acme.com to two coasts,
you didn’t need to inform Network Solutions. Systems that need an address from one coast simply
discover where to find addresses as they thread their way through the DNS hierarchy.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 1 A DNS Primer 5

Although I describe a hierarchy of names with the root servers at the top, you needn’t use that
hierarchy. If your network isn’t connected to the outside world, you can define your own top-level
or root servers.

Locating Mail Servers

Another useful DNS feature is the ability to locate a domain’s email servers. If I have a user
account called mark in the acme.com domain, I’d like people to be able to send mail to
[email protected]. But email needs to go from email server to email server. Suppose I have a friend
named Tom at domain apex.com, and Tom wants to send me an email message. His email server
must find acme.com’s email server. How does this server-to-server rendezvous take place?
To answer that question, consider how you find servers in another popular Internet applica-
tion—the Web. If you want to examine acme.com’s Web page, how do you find the Web server’s
address? You’d guess that its name is www.acme.com (and you’d probably be right), but a more
formal way to find the name of a Web server in a given domain would be nice. No such capa-
bility exists, but you can look up the name of an email server in a specific domain. Zone files can
contain a mail exchanger (MX) record that names the zone’s email server.

Primary and Secondary DNS Servers

You’ve probably guessed the reason why you need two DNS servers—reliability. If one server
goes down, the other can perform acme.com’s name-resolution functions. But how do you keep
the servers synchronized? If you add a machine named yosemitesam.acme.com to the domain,
how do you ensure that both the names.acme.com DNS server and the ns2.safety-net.net DNS
server receive that information? Simply designate one server to be a primary DNS server and the
other to be a secondary DNS server.
I do all my acme.com zone file editing on the primary DNS server. Then, the primary server
sends the most recent zone file information to the secondary server. When a machine queries the
secondary server about acme.com, the secondary server answers the query from its copy of the
zone file. The secondary server’s zone file typically has a Time to Live (TTL) period. If the primary
DNS server doesn’t update the secondary server’s zone file within this expiration period (i.e., a cer-
tain number of hours), the secondary server assumes that all the zone information is stale and dis-
regards it. The TTL period is typically 24 hours or more, so if the primary DNS server is down for
only a few hours, you won’t experience a problem.
Which DNS server is the primary server, and which is the secondary server? Network Solutions
doesn’t know or care; you won’t find that information in the company’s database. You determine
which DNS server is the primary name server in the Start of Authority (SOA) record. The SOA
record also tells secondary DNS servers how long to keep old zone file information, specifies the
TTL period, and reports the email address of the domain’s technical contact.
You can have as many secondary DNS servers as you want. This scenario might sound
familiar. In many respects, primary and secondary DNS servers are similar to PDCs and BDCs in
NT 4.0 and NT 3.x.

DNS and Windows 2000

With MX records, standard DNS lets you easily find the email servers for a particular domain. RFC
2052 lets you look up other kinds of servers via a new kind of DNS record—an SRV record. An

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

6 DNS and Windows 2000

SRV record lets you ask a DNS server whether it knows of any machines that act as servers of a
specific type. Win2K-aware machines look in the SRV records to find DCs.
Win2K-aware machines exploit another DNS feature: DDNS. When a Win2K client machine
starts, it asks its local DNS server to add the client name to the zone database. Although pre-
Win2K systems don’t know to ask the DNS server to add them to the zone database, Win2K’s
DHCP server accomplishes the task for them. So, even legacy machines get added to the local
zone file. Win2K blurs the line between NT domain and DNS domain. A DNS zone file under
Win2K functions similarly to a WINS database under NT 4.0 and earlier.
Win2K uses DDNS in another way. When you create or modify an AD-based domain, the DC
automatically reflects that domain’s structure in the domain’s zone files. And the DC uses DDNS to
enter those records into the DNS database.

Microsoft’s DNS Server

To benefit fully from the integration of DNS and AD, you don’t need to use the DNS server that
ships with Win2K. However, you can’t continue using a 1992 copy of BIND.
To work with Win2K, DNS servers must satisfy a couple of prerequisites. First, the DNS servers
must support RFC 2052 (the SRV record type) and RFC 2136 (DDNS). Many current DNS server
products (including the current version of BIND) offer such support. Second, the DNS server must
accept host names that include the underscore character. Many of the records that AD automati-
cally creates include underscores. Because DNS doesn’t accept underscores by default, many recent
DNS implementations won’t accept DDNS registrations on names that include underscores. Alterna-
tively, you can divide your existing DNS domain into two or more zones, place the Win2K and NT
machines into a new zone, make a Win2K system the authoritative DNS server for only that zone,
and leave all your other machines in the old zone.

In Your Hands
To fully understand DNS, you need to know how the international DNS hierarchy functions, how
new RFCs extend DNS’s power, and how you can fit your organization into the DNS hierarchy. All
these pieces fit together to make DNS the perfect choice for a Win2K naming infrastructure.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter X Chapter Title 7

Chapter 2

How DNS Works

—by Gary C. Kessler

As a systems administrator, you might be responsible for connecting your company to the Internet,
possibly for the first time. But before you can do so, you need to understand the basics of Internet
addressing, find out how to get a Web address, and learn how to register your domain name. In
Chapter 1, Mark Minasi introduced the fundamentals of DNS. I will help you find resources for
obtaining IP numbers and registering your domain name and provide practical information about
DNS and its associated tools.

Obtaining Names and Addresses

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA—http://www.iana.org) was historically the organi-
zation that doled out names and addresses. However, in 1993, the National Science Foundation
(NSF) awarded to Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com) a 5-year contract that
authorized Network Solutions to operate the InterNIC (http://www.internic.net) name-registration
service. At that time, InterNIC was the place that most people went to for a network identifier
(NET_ID) or a domain name in the .com, .org, or .net namespace. When InterNIC assigned your
IP address, you owned the address and could keep it even if you changed ISPs. Today, the pro-
cess of obtaining addresses and of registering domain names has changed.

IP Addressing in the Modern Era

InterNIC no longer assigns IP addresses and hasn’t done so since about 1997. In the Western
Hemisphere and some parts of the African continent, the American Registry for Internet Numbers
(ARIN—http://www.arin.net) is now the IP number authority. The size of Internet routing tables
was becoming unmanageable, so several years ago ARIN organized unused address space into
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) address blocks. ARIN assigns the CIDR address blocks, in
turn, to ISPs or other regional number authorities, such as Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE—
http://www.ripe.net) in Europe and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC—
http://www.apnic.net). If you’re in the United States, you need to coordinate with your ISP to
obtain an IP NET_ID address from ARIN.
More than 50 percent of all possible Class C addresses are still available, but because the
address supply is rapidly diminishing, getting a full Class C address is difficult. Instead, ISPs and
ARIN distribute small address blocks and assign NET_IDs with as few as eight host addresses. IP
number authorities assign the address blocks by using variable-length subnet masks (VLSMs),
which provide a method of implementing classless addressing. A full description of VLSMs is
beyond the scope of this chapter, but the sidebar “Subnetting and Variable-Length Subnet Masks”
describes the motivation for using VLSMs and gives a VLSM example.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

8 DNS and Windows 2000

Subnetting and Variable-Length Subnet Masks

IP addresses are 32 bits long. The length of the network identifier (NET_ID) part of the
address determines an IP address classification. Class A, B, and C addresses have 8-, 16-,
and 24-bit NET_IDs, respectively. For routing purposes, IP devices such as hosts or
routers must separate the NET_ID from the host identifier (HOST_ID) portion of the
address. Subnet masks perform this separation.
Subnet masks are usually a string of 1s that denote the number of bits of the
address that forms the NET_ID. A Class A address, for example, has an 8-bit subnet
mask, which is written 255.0.0.0. Class B and Class C addresses use the subnet masks
255.255.0.0 and 255.255.255.0, respectively. Subnet masks can also segment the
HOST_ID. Some sites use the HOST_ID to create a subnetwork identifier and smaller
host identifier.
In the past several years, IP address depletion has become a problem. Address
depletion occurs not only because so many new networks exist but also because IP
address authorities are inefficiently assigning classful IP addresses. A site requiring 500
addresses, for example, might receive an entire Class B block of more than 65,000
addresses.
To solve this problem, Internet address administrators have adopted variable-length
subnet masks. VLSMs allow NET_IDs of lengths between 8 and 30 bits. (Subnet masks
don’t allow lengths of 9, 15, 17, 23, or 25 bits because they look like single-bit subnets.)
VLSMs build flexibility into the IP addressing system, and ISPs can efficiently assign
address space.
For example, suppose the U.S. Cable Networks, a consortium of US cable TV com-
panies, receives the Class A address 24.0.0.0. Because 24.0.0.0 is a Class A address, you
can denote it as 24.0.0.0/8 (the /8 is a shorthand notation for the 8-bit subnet mask
255.0.0.0). Several cable TV company ISPs share the 24-block address. Adelphia Cable
Communications (whose ISP service was formerly Hyperion) receives the NET_ID block
24.48.0.0. This block is equivalent to a Class B address, denoted as 24.48.0.0/16. Adel-
phia’s ISP customers, in turn, receive IP addresses from the 24.48.0.0 space and, using
VLSM, usually get something smaller than a Class C address space.
For example, Pizzagalli Construction in Burlington, Vermont, receives a block of 64
addresses with the NET_ID 24.48.165.0/26 (i.e., subnet mask 255.255.255.192). The host
addresses (the final digit set in the NET_ID) range from 0 to 63. Pizzagalli can’t use 0 or
63 because addresses that contain all 0s or all 1s are invalid host addresses. In a final
example, Pension Works in Colchester, Vermont, receives a block of 32 addresses. The
company’s NET_ID is 24.48.165.64/27 (i.e., subnet mask 255.255.255.224), and the com-
pany’s host address range is 64 to 95. Usable host addresses are 65 to 94.

Continued on page 11

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 2 How DNS Works 9

Subnetting and Variable-Length Subnet Masks continued

Because sub-Class C addresses are common today, you need to understand how
subnet masking works. Table A shows the subnet masks that you might use with a Class
C address. Assigning sub-Class C addresses preserves address space, but VLSMs are also
beneficial because they enable Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR). The American
Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) introduced CIDR several years ago to reduce the
size of Internet routing tables. Customers used to receive assigned IP addresses sequen-
tially. Now ISPs assign IP addresses from a block of addresses. Now our example com-
pany, Adelphia Cable Communications, can get all its packets from the 24.48.0.0/16
network. The hundreds or thousands of networks can reference one line in a routing
table. After the packets get to Adelphia, the company’s routers have to deliver the
packets to the correct destination network, but that detail is transparent to the rest of the
Internet.
TABLE A:
Subnet Masks You Can Use with a Class C Address

Number of Bits Subnet Number of

in Mask Mask Host Addresses Notes
24 255.255.255.0256 (254 usable) Standard full Class C
25 255.255.255.128 - Single-bit subnet masks (never used)
26 255.255.255.192 64 (62 usable) Common
27 255.255.255.224 32 (30 usable) Common
28 255.255.255.240 16 (14 usable) Becoming more common
29 255.255.255.248 8 (6 usable) Becoming common
30 255.255.255.252 4 (2 usable) Typically used on point-to-point
link between ISP and customer
31 255.255.255.254 - Invalid; results in single-bit
HOST_ID
32 255.255.255.255 - Invalid; no room for HOST_ID

How can a company with several hundred systems operate with a mere handful of IP
addresses? Companies might have many users, but generally they have only a few servers that
require publicly visible IP addresses. Increasingly, organizations use private IP addressing internally
and assign a public IP address to public servers. Companies might use the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 1918 private addresses or Network Address Trans-
lation (NAT) to statically map the server’s public address to an internal private address. When a
client system communicates with the Internet, NAT dynamically and temporarily assigns the client
a public address. If the number of clients that need addresses exceeds the number of available
public addresses, Port Address Translation (PAT—aka NAT overload) provides the addresses. NAT
and PAT address management occur transparently at the router or NAT server.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

10 DNS and Windows 2000

Registering Domain Names in the Internet’s Commercial Era

The NSF’s contract with Network Solutions expired in April 1998. Unfortunately, no one planned
how to handle domain name requests after that date, so NSF has extended Network Solutions’
contract several times. In 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN—http://www.icann.org) began creating a fair and efficient domain-name-registration
system. Many factors influenced the formation of ICANN, and you can find a good description of
its history and evolution at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA) Web site (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname). Although Network Solutions
remains the sole administrator of names in the .com, .org, and .net namespace, many companies,
such as America Online (http://www.aol.com), ItsYourDomain.Com (http://www.itsyourdomain
.com), and Register.com (http://www.register.com), can register names in that space. You can find
a list of all accredited name registrars at the ICANN Web site.

DNS Internals
DNS is a distributed database that contains host, mail server, name server, and other domain infor-
mation. You must maintain a primary name server and at least one secondary name server for
every Internet domain. When a client system on the Internet needs to find a server’s IP address,
the client sends a DNS query to its local name server. If the local name server doesn’t have the
necessary target server address information, the local name server sends a query to one of 13 well-
known root name servers on the Internet. The query then proceeds to one of the target domain’s
name servers for final resolution. Many ISPs provide primary and secondary DNS service; others
provide only secondary DNS service and require the customer to host the primary name server.
Examining DNS file structure will help you understand the name-lookup process. DNS infor-
mation resides in simple text files called zone files, which contain information called Resource
Records (RRs). The most common RRs are
• Start of Authority (SOA)—denotes the primary name server for a domain and a few additional
administrative items
• Address (A)—supplies a host name’s IP address
• Canonical Name (CNAME)—provides alias host names so that you can associate more than
one host name with an IP address
• Pointer (PTR)—associates a host name with an IP address and performs reverse name lookups
• Mail Exchanger (MX)—defines a domain’s mail systems
• Name Server (NS)—defines a domain’s name servers

Listing 1 shows an example zone file mapping host names to IP addresses in the fictitious
example.com domain. In this example, the domain hosts Web, FTP, email, and name servers, and
the ISP (ispexample.net) hosts the secondary DNS and backup mail server. The IP address in this
example is actually a private IP address. So what do all these records mean? The SOA record
includes the name of the primary DNS server for this domain and the email address associated
with this domain’s naming administrator; note that the record lists the DNS administrator’s email
with a period (.) instead of the at sign (@) because @ has special meaning in DNS files.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 2 How DNS Works 11

LISTING 1:
Example Zone File for the Example.com Domain

example.com. IN SOA dns.example.com. dnsowner.example.com. (

19991005 ;serial # (date format)
10800 ;refresh (3 hours)
3600 ; retry (1 hour)
604800 ;expire (1 week)
86400) ; TTL (1 day)
example.com. IN NS dns.example.com.
IN NS ns1.ispexample.net.
example.com. IN MX 20 mail.example.com.
IN MX 40 mail.ispexample.com.
dns.example.com. IN A 192.168.210.2
mail.example.com. IN A 192.168.210.4
www.example.com. IN A 192.168.210.5
ftp.example.com. IN CNAME www.example.com.

This RR also contains five other parameters. First, a serial number identifies the version of this
information and tells a secondary server that new information exists to download. Second, a
refresh value tells the secondary name servers how often to check for updated information. Third,
a retry value tells the secondary servers how often to reattempt connections to the primary server.
Fourth, an expire value tells the secondary servers when the information in databases is old and
unreliable. And fifth, a Time to Live (TTL) value tells a requester how long you can safely cache
the information.
The NS records contain the names of the name servers for this domain. The first server listed
is the primary name server because it’s the server that the SOA record names. The MX records
contain the names of the email servers for this domain. The number in front of the address is the
preference value and is most useful when the domain has two or more email servers.
When a remote user sends mail to [email protected], the remote mail system looks up the
MX record for the example.com domain. The remote mailer then attempts to establish an SMTP
connection with the mail server that has the lowest preference value. Thus, an organization can
specify multiple mail servers with the same preference level for load balancing, or specify servers
with different preference levels to provide a backup. The A records contain the IP addresses to
associate with each of the listed host names in the example.com domain. The CNAME record con-
tains alias host names. In this example, the FTP and Web services are on the same server but have
two different names that map to the same IP address. Using two separate names ensures that if the
FTP service moves to another system, external users never need to know about the move.
Each domain contains another important zone file: the reverse lookup file. This file maps an
IP address to a host name. The zone file for the fictitious 192.168.210.0 address space (assuming
that this entire Class C address has one owner) might look like the file in Listing 2. The only new
RRs in this listing are the PTR records, which associate an IP address with a host name.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

12 DNS and Windows 2000

LISTING 2:
Example Reverse Lookup File for the Example.com Domain

210.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN SOA dns.example.com. dnsowner.example.com.

(19990930 ;serial # (date format)
10800 ;refresh (3 hours)
3600 ; retry (1 hour)
604800 ;expire (1 week)
86400) ;minimum TTL (1 day)
210.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN NS dns.example.com.
IN NS ns1.ispexample.net.
2.210.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR dns.example.com.
4.210.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR mail.example.com.
5.210.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR www.example.com.

You’ll find DNS server software under a variety of names, depending on the OS you use. Win-
dows NT simply refers to DNS, but UNIX calls the software named (i.e., name daemon) or
Berkeley Internet Name Domain; BIND is the most common name. Although each DNS software
package is slightly different from others, it’s useful to understand RRs and file formats so that you
know how the packages lay out domain name information.
All DNS software uses the same terminology to refer to DNS information, whether the software
uses regular DNS text-file format or a proprietary-file format. Furthermore, although individual sites
might not use UNIX-based DNS software, the major ISPs do, so you need to use the correct termi-
nology when discussing DNS with your ISP.
Last but not least, UDP datagrams on port 53 carry DNS queries. DNS zone transfers between
primary and secondary name servers use TCP on port 53. If you run the primary DNS server on
your network and connect to an outside secondary DNS server, configure your firewall so that
zone transfers can occur only between the designated name servers.

Tools to Examine DNS and Domain Information

The most basic tool you can use to search a domain name or IP number database is Network
Solutions’ Whois. Although you’ll find Whois on all UNIX systems and some Windows systems,
accessing the database is easiest on the Internet. You can find Network Solutions’ Web interface to
Whois at http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois. Figure 1 shows a Whois query
for the win2000mag.com domain. The response shows contact information for the domain, when
the record was last updated, and the associated name servers (in preference order). You can use
Whois to look up information based on domain names and contact names. Whois can also tell
you whether a particular domain name is available.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 2 How DNS Works 13

Figure 1:
Viewing the Web interface to Network Solutions’ Whois

Nslookup is a handy TCP/IP utility for examining the DNS database. This utility is a standard
part of NT (and UNIX) systems, and versions of Nslookup for Windows 9x also exist. You can use
the Nslookup utility as a test aid to examine DNS.
Figure 2 shows an example Nslookup session. As callout A in Figure 2 shows, the user
invokes the program by typing the command nslookup. The program responds by listing the
name and address of the user’s default name server. The first command, help, which callout B in
Figure 2 shows, lists all Nslookup commands and functions. Callout C in Figure 2 shows that the
user next enters host name www.win2000mag.com. The program responds by listing the host’s IP
address (204.56.55.202). The set type=MX command, which callout D in Figure 2 shows, tells the
program to display MX information. The following command, win2000mag.com, asks for informa-
tion about the win2000mag.com domain. The program responds with the names and addresses of
the domain’s three mail servers (and two name servers). Callout E in Figure 2 shows the set
type=SOA and win2000mag.com commands, which tell the program to display SOA information
about the win2000mag.com domain. Finally, the program responds with the SOA parameter infor-
mation, as well as the names and addresses of the domain’s name servers.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

14 DNS and Windows 2000

Figure 2:
Screen Output of Example Nslookup Terminal Session

A C:\>nslookup
Default Server: clover.sover.net
Address: 209.198.87.40

B > help
Commands: (identifiers are shown in uppercase, [] means optional)
NAME - print info about the host/domain NAME using default server
NAME1 NAME2 - as above, but use NAME2 as server
help or ? - print info on common commands
set OPTION - set an option
all - print options, current server and host
[no]debug - print debugging information
[no]d2 - print exhaustive debugging information
[no]defname - append domain name to each query
[no]recurse - ask for recursive answer to query
[no]search - use domain search list
[no]vc - always use a virtual circuit
domain=NAME - set default domain name to NAME
srchlist=N1[/N2/.../N6] - set domain to N1 and search list to N1,N2, etc.
root=NAME - set root server to NAME
retry=X - set number of retries to X
timeout=X - set initial time-out interval to X seconds
querytype=X - set query type, e.g., A,ANY,CNAME,MX,NS,PTR,SOA
type=X - synonym for querytype
class=X - set query class to one of IN (Internet), CHAOS, HESIOD or ANY
server NAME - set default server to NAME, using current default server
lserver NAME - set default server to NAME, using initial server
finger [USER] - finger the optional NAME at the current default host
root - set current default server to the root
ls [opt] DOMAIN [> FILE] - list addresses in DOMAIN (optional: output to FILE)
-a - list canonical names and aliases
-d - list all records
-t TYPE - list records of the given type (e.g. A,CNAME,MX,NS,PTR etc.)
view FILE - sort an ‘ls’ output file and view it with pg
exit - exit the program
C > www.win2000mag.com
Server: clover.sover.net
Address: 209.198.87.40

Name: www.win2000mag.com
Address: 204.56.55.202

D > set type=MX

> win2000mag.com
Server: clover.sover.net
Address: 209.198.87.40

win2000mag.com MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = mail2.rockymtn.net

win2000mag.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.duke.com
win2000mag.com MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = mail.rockymtn.net

win2000mag.com nameserver = ns1.duke.com

win2000mag.com nameserver = ns2.duke.com
mail2.rockymtn.net internet address = 166.93.8.2
mail.duke.com internet address = 204.56.55.3
mail.rockymtn.net internet address = 166.93.8.2
ns1.duke.com internet address = 204.56.55.1
ns2.duke.com internet address = 204.56.55.2
E > set type=SOA
> win2000mag.com
Server: clover.sover.net
Address: 209.198.87.40

win2000mag.com
primary name server = ns1.duke.com
Continued on page 16

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 2 How DNS Works 15

Figure 2 continued
responsible mail addr = dnsadmin.duke.com
serial = 10
refresh = 3600 (1 hour)
retry = 600 (10 mins)
expire = 86400 (1 day)
default TTL = 3600 (1 hour)

win2000mag.com nameserver = ns1.duke.com

win2000mag.com nameserver = ns2.duke.com
ns1.duke.com internet address = 204.56.55.1
ns2.duke.com internet address = 204.56.55.2
> exit

C:\>

The NS host information that Nslookup shows (ns1.duke.com and ns2.duke.com) doesn’t
match the host information that the Whois lookup shows (ns1.rockymtn.net and ns2.rockymtn.net).
This result is unusual but merely signals that the Whois database isn’t synchronized with the name
server information advertised on the Internet. Given this discrepancy, the display from Nslookup is
more definitive than the display from Whois.
In the past, Internet connections, IP addresses, and domain names were the responsibility of
UNIX systems administrators. However, because NT represents a growing percentage of servers on
the Internet, these details are important to systems administrators who have traditionally concen-
trated on the LAN. DNS is one of the most important aspects of your site’s Internet connection. If
you don’t set it up correctly, your public hosts might be unreachable and your users might not be
able to reach hosts on the Internet. If you want to know the nitty-gritty behind DNS, the industry-
standard text is Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu’s DNS and BIND, 4th edition (O’Reilly & Associates,
2001). For NT-specific information, see Matt Larson and Cricket Liu’s DNS on Windows 2000, 2nd
edition (O’Reilly & Associates, 2001).

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

16 DNS and Windows 2000

Chapter 3

Windows 2000 DNS

—by Mark Minasi

In some ways, Windows 2000 DNS seems to be merely a replacement for WINS under Windows
NT 3.51 and later. Because NT 4.0 doesn’t depend much on DNS, most of us don’t think much
about our DNS infrastructure. In contrast, WINS under NT requires quite a bit of thought, in partic-
ular about how many WINS servers you need. Having many WINS servers makes for speedy name
resolution, which is good. But having many WINS servers also leads to replication and database-
corruption problems, which is decidedly bad. Consequently, WINS architecture is something of a
balancing act.
In comparison, DNS is generally a more trouble-free naming service than WINS. In this
chapter, I explain why.

The Workings of WINS

WINS and DNS are both name-resolution systems, which means that they keep track of the name
and IP address of every system on your network. That tracking is a great convenience: Because
WINS and DNS know both the name and IP address of all your computers, you can assign your
computers relatively easy-to-recall names, such as \\mypc or mypc.acme.com, and let WINS or
DNS remember the computers’ more cryptic IP addresses. Thus, you can use the friendlier names
for all your network usage and administration tasks and rarely need to deal directly with IP
addresses. For example, when you type
net view \\mypc

at a command line, your system automatically knows to ask a WINS server to convert the name
\\mypc to the computer’s IP address, or more technically, to resolve the name \\mypc.
Every NT 4.0 or NT 3.51 system running TCP/IP (or for that matter, any Windows 9x or Win-
dows for Workgroups—WFW—3.11 system) needs to know the IP address of a WINS server that
the system can count on to resolve names. That WINS server, which is called the system’s primary
WINS server, performs two functions: system registration and name resolution. In my opinion, the
fact that WINS uses the same server for both system registration and name resolution is a weak-
ness of NT. Let me explain why.
WINS can’t resolve names to IP addresses unless it knows the names and addresses of the
systems on your network. Where does it get that information? Every system that relies on WINS
for name resolution must contribute to WINS’s database of names and addresses. In other
words, each WINS-using client system must register its information with a WINS server: “Hi,
WINS. This is \\mypc, and I’m at address 10.4.15.11. Please tell anyone who is looking for me
to go to that address.”

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 3 Windows 2000 DNS 17

But systems don’t register just once. WINS servers remember systems’ address information for
only a few days, depending on how the administrator set up the WINS server. So systems rereg-
ister with WINS regularly—every time they boot and whenever they renew their DHCP leases, for
example. Consequently, a WINS server is usually busy in the morning because it needs to accept a
lot of registrations from machines that employees boot in preparation for the workday.
You’d think that you could lighten the registration load by increasing the number of WINS
servers on your network and assigning fewer workstations to each one. However, that’s not a
good idea. All those WINS servers need to share the names and addresses that they learn, combine
them, boil them down to one unified database, then distribute that database to all WINS servers so
that each WINS server can resolve every name in the network. This boiling-down and distribution
process is called replication. If you install more than a dozen or so WINS servers in your enter-
prise, the process can go awry, leaving a corrupted and useless database. As a result, Microsoft has
always said that you shouldn’t have more than 15 WINS servers in your entire company, no matter
how large or geographically distributed the company is.
But remember that WINS servers serve two functions. In addition to registering systems, WINS
servers resolve names. Clearly, you’d like your network to respond quickly to name queries. One
way to achieve the desired response time might be to have a large number of WINS servers, each
with a copy of the WINS database. Each WINS server might serve only a hundred or so worksta-
tions and therefore could respond speedily to name-resolution queries. Unfortunately, that
approach doesn’t work because it also gives you many registration-taking WINS servers and thus
opens the door to potentially unacceptable replication difficulties.

The Differences in DDNS

Let’s imagine a better approach. What if you had a small set of WINS servers that only took regis-
trations and a much larger set of WINS servers that only responded to queries? The few registra-
tion-taking WINS servers could keep a nice, clean database and would see to it that the query-only
WINS servers would always have the most up-to-date database. You’d have to change things
around a bit on the client side because you’d have to tell workstations the names of two WINS
servers. For example, you’d tell \\mypc, “When you need to register or reregister, go to WINS
server A, and when you need to resolve a name, go to WINS server B.” If you think that system
seems better, then you’re going to like dynamic DNS (DDNS) under Win2K. With DDNS, your
workstation registers its name and IP address with a particular DNS server but might turn to a dif-
ferent DNS server to resolve names.
In the standard DDNS world, only one DNS server accepts all the registrations for your entire
domain. (If you’re running Win2K DNS servers, you can change that, but let’s restrict this discus-
sion to standard DDNS implementations.) That DNS server, which is called the primary DNS server
for its domain, stores all the registered names for the entire domain in a file called a zone file.
(Note to the DNS techies reading this chapter: Because of space limitations, I’m blurring the line
between zone and domain.)
To provide DNS servers that can resolve names for your domain, what do you need? The eas-
iest answer is that you need to set up some DNS servers. They don’t need to be running DNS
server software that supports DDNS. Nor do they need to possess a local copy of your domain’s
zone file, because unlike WINS servers, DNS servers can resolve names for domains they’ve never
heard of. DNS servers simply search the hierarchy of DNS names and servers to find a server that

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

18 DNS and Windows 2000

can resolve the name query, then obtain that server’s assistance to resolve the name. For good
measure, DNS servers remember (i.e., cache) each name query request. As a result, if you ask a
DNS server to resolve the same name in the near future, the DNS server has the information it
needs to immediately resolve the name. DNS servers that only resolve name queries and aren’t
responsible for any domains are called caching-only servers.
Under WINS, your workstation needs to reregister with the WINS server that resolves names.
Under Win2K DDNS, the DNS server specified as your workstation’s preferred DNS server only
resolves names. When your workstation needs to reregister with the primary DNS server on your
domain, your workstation tells its preferred DNS server, “I’m part of the acme.com domain. Please
tell me who is the primary DNS server for acme.com.” In more technical terms, your workstation
asks its local caching-only DNS server to retrieve the Start Of Authority (SOA) record for the
acme.com domain. The SOA record contains several pieces of information about the acme.com
domain, including the DNS name (not the IP address) of acme.com’s primary DNS server. Armed
with that information, your workstation knows who to contact to reregister.
So DNS seems to afford us greater flexibility in offering as many name-resolution servers as
we could want. But what about the registration side? It seems that every system in the enterprise
will have to reregister every day on the domain’s primary DNS server. Won’t that requirement
cause a problem?
Potentially, yes. But that problem might not be severe. For one thing, reregistration might not
be necessary as long as your workstation’s IP address doesn’t change. Unlike WINS records, old
DDNS records don’t expire and disappear by default (although you can change that behavior if
you want to). So if the primary DDNS server is too busy to reregister your workstation, you prob-
ably won’t notice because your workstation already has a record in DNS. But for overloaded pri-
mary DDNS servers, DDNS offers an option called Active Directory (AD)-integrated zones. This
option lets you spread the registration-taking responsibility among all the AD domain controllers
(DCs), which all act as DDNS servers.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 4 DNS and Active Directory 19

Chapter 4

DNS and Active Directory

—by Mark Minasi

Active Directory (AD) is a nice bit of technology—particularly for a version 1.0 technology—that
has grabbed many headlines in the Windows 2000-related literature in the past couple of years.
But to work correctly, AD needs its own directory: the directory of servers and workstations that
you know as DNS. Before you start your AD planning, you need to do your DNS homework—or
the best-planned AD will run badly.
Most of us learned the basics of DNS—DNS zones, Start of Authority (SOA), Name Server (NS),
mail exchanger (MX), host (A) records, primary and secondary servers, and the like—under Win-
dows NT 4.0, perhaps by setting up a simple DNS server. But to build a sturdy DNS structure that
supports AD with style, you need to know more. For example, should you use the DNS server that
ships with Win2K or a non-Microsoft DNS server, such as the almost ubiquitous Berkeley Internet
Name Domain (BIND) software that runs on so many UNIX and Linux boxes? Where should you
put DNS forwarders and slaves—and more basically, what do those terms mean? What’s split-brain
DNS? And how can you make AD coexist with an existing DNS infrastructure?

Choosing a DNS Server

Don’t assume that you’d be foolish to host your AD on a BIND (or Lucent Technologies’ Lucent
QIP or other third-party) DNS server. BIND is quite capable of working with AD—and has been
since Win2K’s inception.
To convince myself that AD and BIND get along, I spent one Saturday blowing up my
existing three-domain AD forest and rebuilding it without using Microsoft DNS servers. Instead, I
used MandrakeSoft’s Linux-Mandrake 7.1 and the version of BIND available at the time. In addition
to going smoothly, the process of building the AD forest seemed to go a bit faster than it did with
a Win2K-based DNS server. I used the BIND-based DNS structure to support my AD for several
months thereafter, and during that time I didn’t hit a single snag.
I’m not implying that you shouldn’t consider using Win2K’s DNS server. That server offers an
attractive, if nonstandard, option called AD-integrated zones. AD-integrated zones provide two
things: multimaster primary zones and secure dynamic DNS (DDNS) updates. (For more informa-
tion about Win2K’s standard and AD-integrated zone files, see the sidebar “DNS Zone Types.”)
Win2K uses DDNS in the same way that NT 4.0 uses WINS: as a repository of computer names
and IP addresses as well as a central directory of server types. When an NT 4.0 workstation wants
to find a domain controller (DC) to help the workstation log on to an NT 4.0 domain, the worksta-
tion goes to WINS to find a DC. In contrast, a Win2K Professional workstation that’s a member of
an AD domain queries DDNS to find a DC. The DDNS server must then gather the names and
roles of the machines in your domain. Win2K-based systems assist DDNS in that function by
registering their names with a DDNS server. Thus, Win2K machines essentially introduce them-
selves to the DDNS server and augment its database of names and addresses.
Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
20 DNS and Windows 2000

DNS Zone Types

—by Robert McIntosh

DNS plays an important role in creating an effective Windows 2000 Active Directory
(AD) implementation. AD requires DNS and uses it for name resolution and, with the
help of a new Resource Record (RR) type called SRV records, for service location.
Because AD relies on DNS for these services, Win2K offers a more scalable and efficient
solution than Windows NT 4.0, which uses WINS. A DNS database known as a zone file
contains RRs to link host names with their corresponding IP addresses. Win2K DNS sup-
ports two kinds of zone files, standard and AD-integrated.

Standard Zone Files

Standard zone files are traditional DNS zone files. To use standard zone files, you create
a zone on the DNS server that you plan to use to perform DNS database administration.
This server becomes the primary zone server where all updates, such as RR additions or
deletions, occur. When you create a DNS server to function as a secondary zone server,
you specify the name or IP address of the primary zone server that will provide a copy
of the zone file. You can use secondary zone servers to provide load balancing and a
certain degree of fault tolerance. Secondary zone servers provide only limited fault toler-
ance because they continue to respond to DNS queries; secondary zone servers can’t
perform any updates because they have only a read-only copy of the zone file. The pri-
mary zone server periodically replicates its zone file to the secondary zone server to
ensure that the secondary zone server’s copy is current. With earlier versions of
Microsoft DNS, the primary zone server transfers a full copy of the zone file and over-
writes the existing zone file on the secondary zone server. Win2K DNS supports Incre-
mental Zone Transfers, which means that the primary zone server sends only changes
that have occurred to the zone file since the last replication.

AD-Integrated Zone Files

With Win2K, you can also use AD-integrated zone files to incorporate zone file informa-
tion into AD. With this approach, DNS uses AD for zone file storage and replication,
which has advantages over standard zone types. Because the AD-integrated zone file
process uses AD’s replication service, you don’t need to configure a separate replication
topology. AD-integrated zone files also eliminate the single point of failure that arises
when a standard primary server goes down. With AD’s multimaster approach, you can
make DNS changes at any domain controller (DC), and the changes automatically repli-
cate to the other DCs in the domain according to AD’s default replication topology.
Continued on page 25

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 4 DNS and Active Directory 21

DNS Zone Types continued

Although both zone types support the dynamic update protocol, dynamic DNS (DDNS),
only AD-integrated zones support secure dynamic updates, which let you control who
can update DNS and reserve a particular name for a specific server to use.
Keep in mind is that AD-integrated zone files don’t replicate between domains. This
limitation follows the usual AD replication model in that most information replicates only
to other DCs in the same domain. This issue is especially confusing because the
Microsoft Management Console (MMC) DNS snap-in lets you create zones in multiple
domains with the same name.

Creating Zones and Changing Zone Types

To create a new zone, right-click either the Forward or Reverse look up folder in the
MMC DNS snap-in, and chose New Zone. A wizard appears and asks what type of zone
you want to create. However, note that the option to create an AD-integrated zone
won’t appear if you haven’t already run Dcpromo. In such cases, you can create a stan-
dard zone and change it after you create your AD by right-clicking the zone name in the
DNS snap in and choosing Properties. You can follow this same procedure whenever
you need to change zone types.

But which DDNS server do Win2K-based systems introduce themselves to? In a standard
DDNS system, such as a computer that’s running either BIND or Win2K’s DDNS server in primary
zone mode rather than AD-integrated mode, only one DDNS server—the primary DDNS server—
can accept registrations. Consider a worldwide enterprise that has thousands of machines around
the globe seeking to reregister every morning: All those machines need to reregister with the same
computer—the only computer that can accept those registrations. In contrast, an AD-integrated
zone lets you designate any or all DCs to do double duty as primary DDNS servers and accept
registrations. Machines can then register DNS names with local DCs, reducing WAN traffic.
However, registration is crucial only for servers and DCs. So, you could alternatively attack the
registering-over-the-WAN problem by telling Win2K Pro boxes not to bother registering. (You
make this change on the DNS tab of the TCP/IP Advanced Properties page.) Furthermore, DDNS
differs from WINS in that DDNS registrations don’t expire in a few days—by default, DDNS regis-
trations stay in a DDNS zone forever. So, even if a machine can’t reregister every morning, DDNS
will contain a record for that machine, assuming that the machine registered at least once in the
past.
AD-integrated zones have another feature that you might find attractive—secured DDNS regis-
trations. If you use the default options to set up a DDNS zone on a BIND or Win2K DNS server,
anyone who can connect to that server can register a machine in that zone. BIND lets you prevent
registrations from machines outside certain subnets: When you list the subnets that the BIND
server should accept registrations from, the server ignores all other machines. An AD-integrated
zone lets you restrict DDNS registrations in a different way: You can require registering machines
to log on to the AD domain before they register. This approach is a bit easier to set up than the

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

22 DNS and Windows 2000

BIND approach—simply click the General tab of a zone’s Properties page, click the Allow dynamic
updates? drop-down list, select Only secure updates, and you’re finished.

Using Caching-Only Servers

Consider how you’ll place DNS servers in your intranet to serve your users’ needs. Many DNS
servers exist to hold copies of an organization’s zone files, as you’ve seen if you’ve ever set up a
DNS server. But a lot of DNS servers hold no zones, living only to resolve names, whether on the
Internet (“What is the IP address of http://www.microsoft.com?”) or on your intranet (“Where is
the nearest DC for acme.com?”). Such a DNS server is called a caching-only server. After you set
up a zoneless DNS server, you can see a reference to its caching-only nature in the event log
(event ID 708).
A caching-only server’s strength lies, as its name implies, in the fact that DNS servers
remember the results of previous resolutions. For example, if someone in your office points his or
her Web browser to http://www.cnn.com, the Web browser asks its preferred local DNS server to
find the IP address of http://www.cnn.com from CNN.com’s DNS server. The preferred local DNS
server goes out on the Internet to get that information, and that process takes time. But the second
person to ask the local DNS server for http://www.cnn.com’s IP address gets a nearly immediate
response because the server resolves the name out of its cache rather than turning again to the
Internet for the answer.
However, the local DNS server will eventually return to CNN.com’s DNS server to determine
whether http://www.cnn.com’s IP address has changed. The reason for the return trip is that when
the CNN.com DNS server responded to the initial query, the response included not only http://
www.cnn.com’s IP address but also the amount of time that the local DNS server should cache
that IP address. That amount of time is called the Time to Live (TTL). All responses to DNS resolu-
tion requests contain a TTL. After the TTL expires, a new query causes the local DNS server to
return to the Internet to resolve the name.

Centralizing Cache with Forwarders

You can see that caching DNS resolutions is a great idea. If CNN.com’s TTL were 2 days long, a
local caching-only DNS server could resolve http://www.cnn.com for 2 days before having to
recontact CNN.com’s DNS server.
Now, consider the effects of adding a second local caching-only DNS server—let’s call the first
local DNS server DNS1 and the second server DNS2. When DNS1 learns something, it doesn’t
share that information with DNS2. For example, if someone were to ask DNS2 for http://www
.cnn.com’s IP address, DNS2 must get the information from CNN.com’s DNS server even if DNS1
has cached that IP address. In other words, DNS1 and DNS2 don’t share a cache.
But if you use a forwarder, servers can share a cache. The idea with a forwarder is this: You
set up some local caching-only DNS servers as usual to serve the name-resolution needs of work-
stations and other servers. Then, you set up another server that acts as a sort of DNS server for
these DNS servers. In DNS terms, this server is a forwarder.
When one of the local caching-only DNS servers gets a request to resolve a name that it
doesn’t already have in its cache, that DNS server doesn’t go to the Internet to resolve the name;
instead, the server asks the forwarder to resolve the name. If the forwarder—which is on the same
LAN as the local caching-only DNS server and can communicate with that server at high speeds—

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 4 DNS and Active Directory 23

knows the answer, the forwarder can quickly answer the local caching DNS server’s question. If
the forwarder doesn’t know the answer, the forwarder obtains the answer from the Internet.
Suppose DNS1 serves the first person to ask for the IP address for http://www.cnn.com.
Because DNS1 doesn’t know the answer, it asks the forwarder. The forwarder doesn’t know,
either, because no one has asked the question before, so the forwarder goes to the Internet for the
answer. After the forwarder finds http://www.cnn.com’s IP address, it caches the address, then
sends that information to DNS1.
Now, suppose the second person who wants the IP address for http://www.cnn.com is con-
nected to DNS2. DNS2 can’t resolve the address from its cache, so DNS2 asks the forwarder. This
time, the forwarder knows http://www.cnn.com’s IP address and satisfies DNS2’s request at LAN
speed.
To tell a Win2K DNS server to use another DNS server as a forwarder, simply open the
Microsoft Management Console (MMC) DNS snap-in and right-click the icon that represents the
DNS server that you want to act as a forwarder. Choose Properties, and you’ll see a Forwarders
tab, which Figure 1 shows. The Forwarders tab lets you specify one or more forwarders and a
timeout value.

Figure 1:
The MMC DNS snap-in’s Forwarders tab

[http://www.winnetmag.com/Files/21128/Figure_01.gif]

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

24 DNS and Windows 2000

Why would you want a timeout value? Well, if your forwarder stops working, DNS1 and DNS2
won’t be able to get the answers to new name-resolution questions. DNS handles that eventuality
with a timeout. If a local caching DNS server such as DNS1 or DNS2 asks the forwarder a question
and the forwarder doesn’t respond within a certain length of time, the local caching DNS server
goes to the Internet and resolves the name on its own. (As I explain later, that action is a potential
liability.)

Using Split-Brain DNS

Take a look at a DNS zone in an AD domain, and you’ll notice two things. First, AD stores a lot of
stuff in DNS. Second, much of that stuff is information that you wouldn’t want anyone outside the
organization to see. In particular, a zone in an AD domain contains the names and addresses of
your DCs, and you probably don’t want the world to have that information.
One way to avoid running a too-visible network is to keep two sets of DNS books: one DNS
zone that the outside world can see and another DNS zone that only the internal organization can
see. Some people call this arrangement split-brain DNS. Here’s how it works.
When you ask your preferred DNS server to resolve a name for you, the server first looks in
its cache. Then, if the name isn’t in the cache and the DNS server holds any zones, it looks in
those zones to try to resolve your request. The server goes to a forwarder or to the Internet only if
it can’t answer the request from its cache or its zones. The key to split-brain DNS is that the DNS
server favors the information in its zones over information it can find on the Internet.
Let’s look at an example to see how to set up these two sets of books. Suppose we have a
domain named acme.com. On that domain, we have a few DNS addresses that we want the out-
side world to be able to see—two DNS servers (ns1.acme.com and ns2.acme.com), a mail server
(mail.acme.com), and a Web server (www.acme.com). Our externally visible acme.com zone, then,
is slim—fewer than a dozen records, all of which refer to routable IP addresses accessible through
the public Internet. We create that zone file and put it on our two externally visible DNS servers,
ns1.acme.com and ns2.acme.com. (We might not even run our own DNS servers—for a zone that
small, many firms simply let their ISP host the files.) Network Solutions has the addresses of
ns1.acme.com and ns2.acme.com in its database of all DNS servers, and any DNS server outside of
Acme—the kind that a user on the Internet might query—will need to ask Network Solutions’ DNS
servers where to find the acme.com servers. Consequently, the only servers that outsiders will see
are ns1.acme.com and ns2.acme.com.
Inside Acme, however, we have an intranet built on nonroutable addresses—perhaps a
10.x.x.x network—that uses some kind of port address translation scheme to connect to the
Internet. Anyone inside Acme can initiate communication to the Internet, but people on the
Internet can’t initiate communication to our internal 10.x.x.x addresses. (To keep this example
simple, the port address translation is the only “firewall” that we’ll imagine for Acme.)
On the intranet, we set up a group of DNS servers that act as preferred DNS servers for other
machines on the intranet. Those DNS servers use the external acme.com DNS servers as for-
warders, enabling people within the intranet to resolve names and surf the Internet. The internal
DNS servers aren’t simply caching-only DNS servers; those internal servers also hold a copy of an
acme.com zone. However, that zone isn’t the externally visible acme.com zone that ns1.acme.com
and ns2.acme.com hold. Rather, the internal DNS servers hold an acme.com zone that AD and

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 4 DNS and Active Directory 25

DDNS built. If that internally visible acme.com zone is an AD-integrated zone, then the internal
DNS servers are Win2K DCs for the acme.com AD domain.
If you’ve never set up a split-brain DNS structure, you should take a minute to review and
think about what’s going on. None of the systems within the Acme intranet use the external DNS
servers as their preferred DNS-name resolvers—rather, the machines on the intranet look to the
intranet’s DNS servers to resolve names. Those internal servers hold copies of a zone called
acme.com. But the acme.com zone that the internal servers hold is different from the acme.com
zone that the outside world sees (although the zone on the internal servers presumably contains
the same records that the external servers’ zone contains—records that point to the Web and per-
haps to mail servers). Instead, the internal zone contains the information that Win2K systems need
to locate DCs.
The outside world will never find or refer to those intranet DNS servers because Network
Solutions’ DNS servers don’t know about Acme’s intranet DNS servers. So, an attempt to resolve an
acme.com name from the Internet never reaches an intranet DNS server. Even if a user from out-
side Acme were to attempt to use an internal DNS server, that attempt would fail because the
internal server has a nonroutable IP address.

Using Slave Servers to Protect Intranet Servers

Before leaving the Acme example, I want to note a potential security problem. I said that the
intranet DNS servers use the external DNS servers as forwarders. But recall what happens when a
forwarder doesn’t respond quickly enough to a name-resolution request—the intranet DNS server
searches the Internet’s DNS servers to try to find the answer. Security experts say that action results
in a potentially troublesome hole in security. Simply put, your DNS server could end up con-
necting to a computer that’s masquerading as a DNS server. That false DNS server could exploit
the connection to your intranet DNS server to do various kinds of mischief.
To avoid this exposure, you can tell your intranet DNS servers that if the external DNS servers
timeout without resolving a name, the intranet servers must not attempt to resolve the name on
their own. To configure your internal servers, go to the Forwarders tab in the MMC DNS snap-in
and select the Do not use recursion check box. You then have what Microsoft calls a slave server.

Fitting into an Existing DNS Structure

What if Acme already has a DNS structure in place—perhaps some non-Win2K computers run by
people who’ve been managing the DNS structure for years without having to worry much about
Win2K and NT? Those folks might not be happy about having AD put a lot of information in their
zones. Or maybe Acme’s existing DNS infrastructure doesn’t support DDNS or Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 2782 SRV records, making the infrastructure unac-
ceptable for AD. If you’re faced with an AD-unfriendly infrastructure, what can you do?
The simplest answer is that you can create a subdomain. Instead of giving the AD domain the
same name as the organization’s top-level domain (TLD)—acme.com, for example—you can create
a subdomain named something like win2k.acme.com or ds.acme.com, where ds stands for direc-
tory service. The benefit of this approach is that it doesn’t affect the TLD’s zone very much. Cre-
ating a child domain, such as ds.acme.com, in acme.com requires only a few records in the
acme.com zone file: an NS and an A record for each DNS server in the subdomain. The NS record
points to a Win2K system that acts as the DNS server for the ds.acme.com subdomain.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

26 DNS and Windows 2000

The bottom line is that AD requires a well-built DNS underpinning to work correctly. But the
techniques of DNS design aren’t complex; they’re just new to most of us. If you use the points in
this chapter to build your DNS structure, you’ll be well on your way to a sturdy AD domain.

Uprooting DNS
Suppose you’ve set up a Win2K-based DNS server on your network. To configure it, you right-
click within the MMC DNS snap-in window, then choose Properties. Then, some strange things
happen. You can’t access the Forwarders tab because it’s grayed out, so you can’t tell the DNS
server to use a forwarder. The Root Hints tab is also grayed out, so you can’t change the list of
root servers that your DNS server knows about. What’s going on?
For some reason, Win2K configured your DNS server as a private root server. Recall that DNS
is a hierarchy of names, as in the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) www.minasi.com.—and
yes, that period at the end of the name is deliberate: No DNS name is complete without a period
(.) at its end. This name reflects that a machine named www is in a domain named minasi, which
is a child domain of the domain named com, which itself is a child domain of the topmost domain
of all—the root domain. But we don’t spell the root’s name out; we represent it with a period. An
actual DNS server—13 of them, in fact—contains the DNS records for the root domain. And that
domain is queried quite a bit—you typically can’t find other domains without first finding the root.
Win2K’s DNS server knows that. The first time that you start up a Win2K-based DNS server, it
appears to look for the root domain. If the server doesn’t find a root domain, it seems—I say
“seems” because this behavior appears to be inconsistent—to respond by saying “if I can’t find a
root, then I must be the only DNS server in the universe” and creating a root domain on itself, in
effect disconnecting from the public DNS hierarchy. The server solipsistically decides that it’s the
authority and that trying to find another DNS server is pointless. Until you cure the server of its
delusion, it won’t be much good.
Well, let me rephrase that a bit: At times, you might like to have a DNS server unconnected to
the public DNS hierarchy. A very secure network, completely disconnected from the Internet,
wouldn’t need to be able to search the public DNS hierarchy. But in most cases, this situation isn’t
what you want.
Telling a DNS server that it isn’t the root shouldn’t be difficult, but it can be frustrating if you
don’t know how. Here are three ways to introduce your server to the rest of the world. I explain
all three so that I can also offer some insight into how to do a bit of under-the-hood work on
DNS.
All the methods share the same basic approach: They delete the root domain from your DNS
server. The command-line method uses a command called dnscmd.exe from the Win2K Server
Tools add-on. You’ll need to install the command; you’ll find it in the \support\tools folder on the
Win2K Server CD-ROM. Then, you can delete the root from your DNS server by typing
dnscmd /zonedelete .

The period at the end of the command is the name of the zone to delete. You must use Dnscmd’s
/dsdel option if the zone you’re deleting is an AD-integrated zone (although I’m not sure how
you’d end up with an AD-integrated root domain). In the command, case doesn’t seem to matter.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 4 DNS and Active Directory 27

After you execute the command, I recommend restarting the DNS service. Then, open the
DNS snap-in, and you’ll see that the Forwarders and Root Hints tabs on the server’s Properties
page are no longer grayed out.
You can also deroot a DNS server from the DNS snap-in. Open the Forward Lookup Zones
folder, and you’ll see a folder whose name is simply “.”, which, as you now know, is the root
domain. Right-click that folder, choose Properties, and check that the zone type is Primary rather
than AD-integrated; if the zone is AD-integrated, click Change next to the type and convert the
zone to a standard primary zone. Then, in the Forward Lookup Zones folder, right-click the root
zone and click Delete. Close the DNS snap-in, restart the DNS Server service, then reopen the DNS
snap-in. The Forwarders and Root Hints tabs will no longer be grayed out.
As far as I know, the third uprooting approach works only on a standard primary zone. First,
stop the DNS Server service, either from the GUI or by typing
net stop “dns server”

at the command line. Then, edit the registry to remove the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Zones\. subkey (the final period is part of the subkey). Restart
the DNS service, and you’re back in the public DNS hierarchy.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

28 DNS and Windows 2000

Chapter 5

Navigating Name Resolution

—by Sean Daily

If you asked me, as a network consultant, to choose the most problematic area of Microsoft Win-
dows networking, my unblinking answer would be name resolution. You can directly relate ail-
ments such as sluggish performance, client computers’ or applications’ inability to connect to
servers, incomplete browse lists, and obscure error messages to problems resolving computers’
names to their IP addresses. To help you overcome these maladies, I offer a name-resolution
primer, discuss some of the lesser-known causes behind name-resolution problems, and resolve a
common name-resolution misunderstanding.

An Equal Opportunity Annoyer

In the Internet’s DNS-driven namespace, name resolution is fairly straightforward. To resolve
names, clients query DNS servers, which either provide the IP address of the host in question or
inform the client that no such name exists—a generally transparent process. Not so with Windows-
based networks’ name-resolution process, which involves additional layers and services, including
WINS servers and clients, broadcasting, and static name-to-IP address mapping files (i.e., HOSTS
and LMHOSTS files). These additional name-resolution methods complicate the process and make
diagnosing and resolving problems trickier. Before I jump into the complicated mechanics, I want
to cover the fundamentals of name resolution in a TCP/IP environment.

Resolution Rudiments
Unlike protocols that rely exclusively on broadcasting (e.g., IPX/SPX, NetBEUI) to resolve names,
TCP/IP in a Windows environment can also use point-to-point name server queries. Point-to-point
queries are preferable because they’re more reliable, can easily cross routers, and use less network
bandwidth than broadcast queries. (A point-to-point query is like a friend calling you on the tele-
phone to ask a question, whereas broadcasting is like a friend standing in front of your house
yelling into a megaphone to ask a question. In the former case, the communication involves only
your friend and you; in the latter case, all your neighbors become involved.)

The Four Node Types

Clients of all Windows OSs—except Windows 2000—require the presence of the NetBIOS session
layer with a network transport protocol. (Win2K doesn’t rely exclusively on NetBIOS to support
networking activities: Win2K’s TCP/IP implementation can use DNS to locate network servers and
services.) So, the OSs’ TCP/IP protocol stacks support a modified form of TCP/IP called NetBIOS
over TCP/IP (NetBT). Windows clients that use NetBT (i.e., WINS clients) can attempt name reso-
lution by using one of four NetBT node types: b-node, p-node, m-node, and h-node.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 5 Navigating Name Resolution 29

B-node
B-node clients use broadcasts to register their names and resolve the names of other machines on
the network. B-node is undesirable for most networks because IP routers typically can’t forward
broadcasts, so b-node limits a client’s scope of resolution to one IP subnet (i.e., network segment).
And because b-node relies on network-saturating broadcasts, it uses more bandwidth than point-
to-point methods. B-node is the default for Windows clients that don’t have a configured NetBIOS
Name Server (NBNS—the generic name for a WINS server, which is typically a Win2K- or Win-
dows NT-based server). NT also supports a slightly altered form of b-node called modified b-node.
A modified-b-node client first checks its local name cache for a name-to-address mapping. If the
client doesn’t find the address in memory, it resorts to broadcasting. If neither of those methods
works, the client checks the local LMHOSTS file (if it exists) in the \%systemroot%\system32\
drivers\etc folder on Win2K or NT systems or in the Windows folder on Windows 9x systems.

P-node
P-node clients register their names with a WINS server and use that server to resolve names. P-
node has a major drawback: If the server can’t resolve a name or if you’ve configured the client
with incorrect name-server addresses, the client can’t log on to the network because it can’t dis-
cover the name of a domain controller (DC) to process the logon request.

M-node
M-node resolution is one of two hybrid node types. When attempting to resolve names, m-node
clients use b-node-style broadcasts then point-to-point WINS server (i.e., p-node) queries, in that
order. M-node is optimal for WAN subnets that have no local name server and connect to the
WAN by low-bandwidth links. In these cases, using broadcasts to resolve names helps minimize
traffic on the WAN links.

H-node
H-node resolution is the default for Windows clients that you’ve configured (either manually or
with information from a DHCP server) to register with one or more WINS servers. H-node is
essentially the opposite of m-node: Clients register their names directly with WINS servers and use
these servers first when attempting to resolve names. If the name server queries fail, the client then
uses b-node-style broadcasts.
How do you determine a WINS client’s node type? By default, a client uses b-node unless
you configure it to register with at least one WINS server, in which case the client will use h-
node. However, you can override this behavior. For example, you can use a DHCP scope
option (i.e., a configuration parameter that passes to a DHCP client) to configure clients to use a
specific node type. (You can also use a registry entry to manually configure the WINS node type
setting on most Windows versions. However, I don’t recommend this method because the
manual registry configuration overrides even a dynamic DHCP-assigned node type, making this
method less flexible.)
Because a majority of NT networks use WINS servers, a majority of Windows-based LAN
clients on these networks use h-node resolution. If neither point-to-point nor broadcasting is suc-
cessful, h-node WINS clients then use other methods. H-node uses the following progression to
attempt name resolution:

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

30 DNS and Windows 2000

1. Check whether the queried name belongs to the local machine.

2. Check the local name cache, which by default retains resolved names for 10 minutes.
3. Direct a point-to-point query to the configured WINS server or servers.
4. Use a broadcast query.
5. Use a local LMHOSTS file, if one exists.
6. Use a local HOSTS file, if one exists. (A HOSTS file resides in the \%systemroot%\
system32\drivers\etc folder on Win2K or NT systems or in the Windows folder on Win9x
systems.)
7. Issue a point-to-point query to any configured DNS server or servers. In NT, h-node WINS
clients will attempt this step only when you select the Use DNS for Windows name resolution
check box in the TCP/IP Configuration dialog box. This setting maps to the EnableDNS registry
subkey of type REG_DWORD under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\NetBT\Parameters subkey in NT or the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current
ControlSet\Services\VXD\MSTCP subkey in Win9x. Despite its name, the EnableDNS subkey
controls only whether a client uses DNS servers during NetBT name resolution and doesn’t
affect the use of DNS for other purposes (e.g., resolving Web site names in a browser). By
default, NT disables the setting (i.e., sets the value to 0), whereas Win9x enables the setting
(i.e., sets the value to 1).
Now you understand some of the basics. But you still need to examine why name resolution can
cause networking problems.

DNS Where You Least Expect It

DNS plays a much larger role in name resolution than the previous method order implies.
H-node WINS clients query DNS servers only after all other name-resolution attempts have
failed and only if you’ve enabled the client to use DNS for Windows name resolution. How-
ever, h-node WINS clients attempt to use a DNS server as if it were a WINS server: The client
uses a WINS-style NetBIOS name query, rather than a DNS-client name query, to send a
name-resolution request to the DNS server. As a result, unless your DNS server happens to be
your WINS server and has a registration in its database for the queried name, this h-node
attempt is likely to fail.
The NetBT h-node resolution process isn’t the only time that clients query DNS servers during
a name-resolution attempt. If you’ve enabled DNS on a client and configured the client to use one
or more DNS servers, the client will use DNS client (aka Domain Name Resolver—DNR) queries
through the standard UDP port 53 to send name queries to DNS servers. The client will send these
DNS-centric queries after checking for a local HOSTS file and before any NetBT name-resolution
attempts. To create a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN—for example, myserver.mybiz.com)
for the query, the client will append any default names that you’ve configured in the DNS section
of its TCP/IP configuration dialog box to the queried name. (I used a network-monitoring tool to
observe this behavior. For information about how to view client name resolution and other net-
work traffic, see the sidebar “Getting Under the Hood with a Network Monitor.”) The following is
a complete and accurate order in which Windows LAN clients attempt to resolve names:
1. Check whether the queried name belongs to the local machine.
2. Use a local HOSTS file if one exists.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 5 Navigating Name Resolution 31

Getting Under the Hood with a Network Monitor

When you want to observe name-resolution behavior on your Windows network, I rec-
ommend that you use a network-monitoring product, such as Microsoft Network Monitor
for Windows NT, Network Monitor for Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS), or a
third-party product. Figure A shows an example network-monitoring session, which dis-
plays the results of a WINS client using the Ping command for a name query. Frames 1
through 8 show that the network traffic from the client starts with a series of DNS
queries to each of the clients’ configured DNS servers, each of which fails. Frame 9
shows that the client then sends the query to the first configured WINS server, which
responds with the queried name’s resolved IP address, as Frame 10 shows. Frames 11
through 13 show the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) traffic that the Ping com-
mand generates between the two hosts.

Figure A:
Using a network-monitoring tool to observe name-resolution behavior

3. Query any configured DNS servers using DNR queries on UDP port 53.
4. Use the appropriate NetBT node type resolution method, according to the client’s NetBT
node type (as I described earlier).
This list paints quite a different picture from the previous list. Most administrators I talk to are
surprised to discover that Windows LAN clients consistently query DNS servers before they
query WINS servers. (This misunderstanding is common because most Microsoft documenta-

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

32 DNS and Windows 2000

tion and training materials that discuss NetBT resolution order neglect to mention these pre-
liminary DNS queries.) Your WINS-enabled LAN clients are probably making an exorbitant
number of failed DNS name-resolution queries on a regular basis. A DNS server that doesn’t
have the information simply responds that it can’t resolve the queried name; this acknowledg-
ment doesn’t take much time, so users seldom notice any delay. However, if the client can’t
reach the DNS server or servers for some reason (e.g., you’ve misconfigured the server
addresses, the servers aren’t reachable from the client’s IP address, the servers are down), the
client must wait for successive DNS server queries to time out before it can attempt a NetBT
method. Depending on the client OS and service pack revision level, this wait can range from
5 seconds to a whopping 2 minutes.

PPTP and Other Problems

DNS-first behavior can prove problematic in several situations. For example, remote laptop
clients with Ethernet connections and configured DNS-server addresses might experience long
delays when they try to connect to registry-cached DNS server addresses configured through the
primary connection (e.g., Ethernet connection, initial RAS modem connection). This situation can
occur when the clients access a corporate LAN over a dial-up connection, but the corporate
LAN’s configuration doesn’t permit access to the DNS servers configured on the primary connec-
tion. As a result, the client has to wait for each DNS server query to time out. These timeout
periods are longer than WINS-associated timeouts because they take into account that the client
might be connecting over the Internet—an unpredictable network compared with the private
LAN or WAN that houses a WINS server. This problem occurs even with a RAS client that
inherits reachable DNS servers from a RAS server because the RAS client places these additions
at the end of its DNS server list and tries them only after it tries the original (i.e., unreachable)
DNS servers.
RAS clients that use PPTP to dial in to a corporate VPN also experience the DNS-delay
problem. By default, RAS uses the most recent connection as the client’s default gateway. (RAS
makes the most recent connection’s default gateway-route metric lower than the previous connec-
tion’s metric, as Figure 1 shows.) But PPTP connections are by nature secondary connections. As
a result, the PPTP connection effectively orphans the primary (i.e., RAS) connection because all
nonlocal traffic travels over the secondary (i.e., PPTP) connection by default. Unless the PPTP
connection serves a network that permits the client to connect to the DNS servers that you con-
figured through the primary connection, the client can’t access those servers. However, the client
doesn’t know about this limitation, and the result is a significant slowdown on the client system
as the client tries each DNS server and times out. Most DNS-enabled clients try to reach each
configured DNS server four times before giving up. In a worst-case scenario, this timeout can
cause a 2-minute delay.
A potential workaround for this problem is to clear the Use default gateway on remote
network check box for the PPTP connection in the DUN client’s phonebook entry. Only traffic
destined for the PPTP-served network will pass over the PPTP DUN connection, and other
traffic, such as DNS queries to Internet-based DNS servers, will pass successfully over the pri-
mary connection. This approach works well when the client connects to a single-LAN net-
work. However, if the client uses a PPTP connection to connect to a WAN and needs to
contact a machine that is across a router from the WAN’s RAS server, this method won’t work

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 5 Navigating Name Resolution 33

because the client uses the default gateway on its primary connection instead of the default
gateway on its PPTP connection.

Figure 1:
Viewing default gateway metrics

Exceptions to the Rule

While researching the DNS-delay problem, I discovered that the delays didn’t occur consistently on
all Windows clients. To find out why, I conducted an extensive battery of tests, using every ver-
sion of Windows from Win95 to Win2K. I found that the long DNS timeouts were a problem with
all versions of Windows except Win2K, NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 (SP4) and later, and Windows 98
Second Edition (Win98SE). As it turns out, Microsoft made significant changes in these versions to
the way that clients perform DNS queries in the TCP/IP stacks. Specifically, Microsoft changed the
algorithm that the DNR component uses to query DNS servers, thus effectively shortening the max-
imum possible timeout in worst-case scenarios. This change reduces client name-resolution times
from 120 seconds to 19 seconds, with an average of 5 seconds in most cases (the exact number of
seconds depends on the number of configured DNS servers and several other factors). Although
the client still queries DNS servers first, the modifications effectively render the problem moot in
most situations.

But Wait—There’s More

Understanding name-resolution methods and how DNS queries can cause problems for your
clients is the first step on the road to solving name-resolution problems. But if neither of the
earlier workarounds applies to your situation, you’ll need to consider other options. Next, I’ll
show you how to take control of name resolution and improve the stability and performance of
your network.
Even the savviest NT administrators don’t fully understand Windows networks’ name-resolu-
tion process. And who can blame them? In a Windows world riddled with multiple name-server
standards, changeable client-resolution orders, self-destructive WINS servers, name-resolution-modi-
fying service packs and patches, and a bevy of contradictory Microsoft articles, I can’t imagine
anyone avoiding problems. Your only hope is to understand Windows name-resolution method-

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

34 DNS and Windows 2000

ology so that you can troubleshoot problems when they arise on your network. I’ve researched a
few solutions that you can employ to ease your name-resolution woes.

Good HOSTS
One solution that Microsoft recommends liberally in its articles is to use the client computer’s
HOSTS file, if one exists. A client always checks the HOSTS file before it checks DNS (i.e., HOSTS-
file name resolution is second only to checking the client’s local name cache). Therefore, you can
avoid DNS-server-query timeouts if the HOSTS file contains the queried names. However, I don’t
like this solution because it requires you to manually deploy and update static text files on mul-
tiple remote machines as you add new machines to the network or change server names or
addresses. The lone benefit of the HOSTS solution is that it provides the fastest possible name res-
olution. If speed is your top priority and you don’t mind maintaining individual HOSTS files on
multiple clients, this solution might be for you.

Use WINS
Another solution is available for NT shops that run DNS servers. As I explained earlier, name-
resolution delays can occur when a client can’t connect to the DNS server (or servers) that
acts as the client’s primary connection. However, if that server is an NT DNS server that is
accessible from both the internal network and the Internet, you can configure the server for
all LAN and remote clients, go to DNS Manager, open a zone’s Properties sheet, go to the
WINS Lookup tab, and select the server’s Use WINS Resolution option, which Figure 2
shows. When you take these steps, both internal and external users can talk to the server for
name resolution, and the DNS server can respond to a client’s dynamic-name query by
querying WINS for the name. The Use WINS Resolution option integrates DNS with WINS
and permits a dynamic form of DNS under NT 4.0. (This DNS configuration leverages WINS
to provide dynamic capabilities but isn’t the same as the dynamic DNS—DDNS—protocol that
Win2K supports.)
This option might not be feasible for everyone. To take advantage of this solution, you must
have an internal DNS server that is also accessible from the Internet, an IP addressing and fire-
wall scheme that lets clients talk to the DNS server’s IP address from within and from outside
the LAN, and a willingness to maintain a DNS server or servers. Also, you might understandably
have security concerns about a DNS server that is accessible to both the internal LAN and the
Internet and about the possibility of obtaining information about internal IP hosts through the
DNS server. You might be able to work around the second prerequisite (i.e., letting both internal
and external clients access your DNS server’s IP address) by entering two DNS server addresses
on the client: one for the DNS server’s external IP and one for its internal address. Thus, the
worst-case scenario is that the client can’t reach the first DNS server (e.g., when connected to
the internal LAN through a RAS connection), so it moves on to the second address, which suc-
ceeds. In addition, you can mitigate the third prerequisite (i.e., maintaining a DNS server) by
configuring the DNS server as a forwarder so that it simply passes queries on to Internet DNS
servers such as those that your ISP maintains.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 5 Navigating Name Resolution 35

Figure 2:
Enabling NT’s DNS server to query WINS

New Order
Another potential solution is to change the name-resolution order on a client. You can configure a
client to use NetBT name-resolution methods and query WINS before it queries DNS. This way,
you might avoid problems that stem from the client’s default name-resolution behavior.
When I began to investigate this idea, I was encouraged to find several Microsoft articles
that explained how to change the name-resolution order on clients running several Windows
platforms. “How to Change Name Resolution Order on Windows 95 and Windows NT”
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=139270) describes two methods—one for NT and one for
Win95—that let you manually control the order in which Windows attempts name resolutions.
(For a list of name-resolution-related Microsoft articles, see “Name-Resolution Resources.”) I tried
the Win95 method first. In Win95, you control name-resolution order through a group of four
registry subkeys: LocalPriority, HostsPriority, DnsPriority, and NetbtPriority. (These subkeys are of
type REG_DWORD and reside under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\VXD\MSTCP\ServiceProvider key.) The four subkeys control the relative priority of
using the local name cache, the HOSTS file, DNS, and NetBT name-resolution methods
(including WINS), respectively. The values can range from -32768 to 32767 (lower numbers
specify a higher priority) with the following default values (in decimal):
• LocalPriority = 499
• HostsPriority = 500
• DnsPriority = 2000
• NetbtPriority = 2001

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

36 DNS and Windows 2000

Name-Resolution Resources
“Default Node Type for Microsoft Clients”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=160177
“DNS Client Does Not Try All Servers in DNS Service List”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=195611
“How to Change Name Resolution Order on Windows 95 and Windows NT”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=139270
“How to Disable NetBIOS Name Resolution on DNS”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=137368
“Microsoft TCP/IP Host Name Resolution Order”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=172218
“SP4 Changes DNS Name Resolution”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=198550

“Unable to Resolve NetBIOS Names Through PPTP Connection”

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=176321
“Windows 95 ServiceProvider Priority Values Not Applied”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=170619
“Windows NT 4.0 ServiceProvider Priority Values Not Applied”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=171567
“Windows TCP/IP Registry Entries”
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=158474

These values explain the client’s preference for DNS (i.e., DnsPriority = 2000) over WINS (i.e.,
NetbtPriority = 2001). As you might expect, the article suggests that you simply reorder the
values so that DNS has a higher value (and thus a lower priority) than NetBT and WINS. This
suggestion seemed straightforward, so I implemented the changes on my Win95 OEM Service
Release 2 (OSR2) test system and rebooted. To my dismay, I detected no difference in the
client’s name-resolution order: My network monitor showed that the client was still querying
DNS first. Another Microsoft Web site search yielded a different article, “Windows 95 Service-
Provider Priority Values Not Applied” (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=170619). It essen-
tially says, “Whoops, sorry, we messed up in the first article.” Apparently, the previous article’s
suggested changes don’t work because earlier Winsock versions (i.e., versions earlier than
wsock32.dll 4.00.1112) contain a bug that causes the system to read the registry data from the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSTCP\ServiceProvider registry
key. The article suggests that to correct the problem, you can manually mirror the values at

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 5 Navigating Name Resolution 37

the original, correct location to the incorrectly queried location. But I

was shocked to discover that after I made these changes, my Win95 OSR2 client still queried
DNS first. Even after I upgraded the client to Win98, I couldn’t make any difference in my
client’s name-resolution order.
Just when I had all but given up on these registry values, I installed Win98SE, and my
client suddenly began querying WINS before DNS. Puzzled over these inconsistencies, I
returned to the Microsoft Web site. I found some articles that implied that the registry values
only work with Winsock 1.x and some articles that implied otherwise. I tried everything I could
think of, but I never successfully reversed the order on Win95 OSR2 with Winsock 2.x. I might
have been more successful using the Win95 retail version, and I don’t know whether these
problems were the result of buggy code, inaccurate Microsoft documentation, or a combination
of the two. However, the experience left a bitter taste in my mouth about the reliability of
some Microsoft articles.
Fresh from my Win95 defeat, I decided to tackle the recommended solution for NT clients. I
had a much more pleasant experience than with Win95. The NT modification takes the form of a
registry DnsNbtLookupOrder subkey (naming is case sensitive) of type REG_DWORD. This subkey
doesn’t exist by default, so you must create it in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current-
ControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters registry key. The subkey can have a value of 0 or 1. The
default value (i.e., 0) instructs the client to use DNS before it uses NetBT methods; a value of 1
instructs the client to first use NetBT methods. As Figure 3 shows, I added the subkey and set its
value to 1, and the client system began querying WINS before DNS.

Figure 3:
Creating and modifying the DnsNbtLookupOrder registry subkey

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

38 DNS and Windows 2000

What’s the downside to using this method to change a client’s name-resolution order? Poten-
tially, this solution can introduce a minor (i.e., several-second) delay when clients query names
than aren’t on the local LAN or that aren’t resolvable using WINS. For example, I noticed that
browsing to an Internet-based Web site on my newly modified client took a few seconds longer
that it had taken previously (although the WINS timeouts were much faster than the DNS timeouts
I’d experienced earlier). Whether this trade-off is acceptable will probably depend on how much
time the user in question spends on browsing the Web and engaging in other Internet-related
activities vs. how much time the user spends connected to the company network resolving internal
server names. Because most users spend a significant amount of time accessing the Internet, the
best solution in most cases will probably be to upgrade to NT SP4 or later (or to Win98SE on
Win9x systems). Another alternative is to upgrade to Win2K Professional, which also has quick
DNS server timeouts.
In addition, not all name queries are created equal. A Windows client or application can
generate two kinds of name queries: NetBIOS name queries and host name queries. Applica-
tions that send NetBIOS name queries bypass DNS and use the NetBT methods (which usu-
ally begin with WINS). Other applications and utilities make generic name queries, which the
client handles as host name queries and hands off first to DNS. (You might be surprised to
discover that even Microsoft Outlook uses generic host name queries to resolve the name of
its Exchange servers. Because Outlook’s server field can accept Internet FQDNs the applica-
tion isn’t limited to using only NetBIOS names.) Thus, these applications will suffer when
DNS-timeout-related problems occur on a client PC. Most non-NetBIOS-centric commands
and utilities, such as the Ping utility, issue host name queries as well. However, some appli-
cations and utilities bypass DNS and pass queries directly to NetBT. For example, when you
type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) phrase
\\SERVER1

in the Start, Run dialog box to bring up a list of shared resources on a server named SERVER1, an
h-node client will process the request as a NetBIOS name query, as Figure 4 shows. Other UNC-
style name references, such as those you use in drive mapping for logon scripts, also exhibit this
behavior. However, on my network, I noticed more generated host name queries than NetBIOS
name queries.

Knowledge Is Power
Armed with an understanding of Windows clients’ name-resolution behaviors on IP networks
and with the techniques I’ve discussed for changing these behaviors, you’re in a better position
to control and optimize your network’s performance. Now that you’re aware of these lesser-
known behaviors, you can use that knowledge to navigate the sometimes-troubled waters of
name resolution.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 5 Navigating Name Resolution 39

Figure 4:
Generating a NetBIOS name-resolution request

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

40 DNS and Windows 2000

Chapter 6

Troubleshooting DNS-Related
AD Logon Problems
—by Mark Minasi

I get many reader questions that go something like this: “I set up a test computer called DC1 at
192.168.1.4 to play with Active Directory (AD). This computer runs Windows 2000 Server and acts
as both the DNS server and the first AD domain controller (DC) on my test domain, which I call
acme.com. Everything works fine with that DC—I can create users and run all the AD administra-
tive tools. Then, I put Win2K Server on another computer named DC2 at 192.168.1.5 and run
Dcpromo to make that computer the second DC in the domain. But Dcpromo says that it’s unable
to contact the domain and can’t make DC2 into a DC for acme.com. Yet I can ping DC1 from DC2
and vice versa, and the DCs are on the same subnet, so why can’t they see each other?”
What causes this problem? To see how things go wrong, let’s reconstruct what happens.

Finding a DNS Server

When you run Dcpromo and instruct it to make your computer into an additional DC, Dcpromo
displays a Network Credentials panel that requests the name, domain, and password of an account
that has the authority to add a DC to the existing domain (e.g., acme.com). Dcpromo then looks
for an acme.com DC and uses the name and password to try to log on. But first, Dcpromo must
be able to find a DC.
Remember that DNS acts as the central naming service for an AD domain. An essential DNS
function in a Win2K network is to help computers find DCs. To use DNS, your system needs to
have two pieces of software: the server software, which runs on the DNS server, and the DNS
client software, which runs on your workstation. Your workstation uses the DNS client software to
resolve names. But the client can’t help unless it can find a DNS server. To find a DC that will
authenticate you, Dcpromo says to the DNS client software, “Find a DNS server for acme.com, and
ask it for the names and IP addresses of the DCs in the domain.” The client does so by querying
the DNS server for an SRV record.
To determine which DNS server your system queries, you can open a command line and type
ipconfig /all

Within the output, you’ll see a list of the IP addresses for all the domain’s DNS servers. When the
DNS client software needs to resolve a DNS query, the client tries to contact the first machine on
the list. If a DNS server is at that location, the client will address all DNS queries to that machine.
The client doesn’t query another DNS server from the list unless the client gets no DNS server
response from the preferred server.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 6 Troubleshooting DNS-Related AD Logon Problems 41

When a Win2K system needs to find an AD DC to log the system on, the system prefers to
use a local DC. So, a Win2K system often does multiple DNS queries when looking for a DC: first,
“Tell me about the local DCs for acme.com,” then if that query fails, “Tell me about all the DCs for
acme.com.”

Troubleshooting AD Authentication
A powerful utility for troubleshooting AD authentication problems is Nslookup, which lets you
mimic the behavior of a Win2K system that’s trying to log on to an AD domain. On a command
line, type
nslookup
The response gives the default server and its IP address and tells you that Nslookup did two
things: It successfully contacted a DNS server, and it asked the server to reverse-resolve the server’s
IP address into a DNS name. Reverse resolution is unnecessary for AD logons, but if a functional
DNS server doesn’t reverse-resolve, Nslookup returns a message that makes you think something is
seriously wrong:
DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Can’t find server name for address 200.200.10.10: Timed out
*** Default servers are not available
Default Server: UnKnown
Address: 200.200.10.20

However, if you type an Internet address (e.g., www.win2000mag.com) at the Nslookup prompt,
the response reveals that Nslookup easily resolves that name:
www.win2000mag.com
Server: ns1.yourisp.com
Address: 200.200.10.10

Name: www.win2000mag.com
Address: 63.88.172.66

Nslookup also complains if the DNS server that your DNS client is supposed to use is dead or has
a problem:
*** Can’t find server name for address 200.200.10.10: No response from server
*** Default servers are not available
Default Server: UnKnown
Address: 200.200.10.10

Do you see a significant difference between this response and the one that indicates a failed
reverse resolution? No? Neither do I. So, how can you determine whether the server has a real
problem or Nslookup is complaining about reverse resolution? Your best bet is to simply try to
resolve an Internet address. If the problem exists at the server, the response will instead resemble
Server: UnKnown
Address: 200.200.10.20

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

42 DNS and Windows 2000

*** UnKnown can’t find www.win2000mag.com: No response from server

Now let’s ask Nslookup to simulate using a local DC to log on. You’ll need to know the name
of your domain and your AD site. You’ll always have at least one site: When you create the first
DC in a forest, Dcpromo creates a site called, by default, Default-First-Site-Name. Type the
Nslookup command on a command line. At the prompt, enter two commands, using the syntax
set type=srv
_kerberos._tcp.<SiteName>._sites.dc._msdcs.<DomainName>

Be sure to include the underscores, and type the second command on one line without spaces.
For example, for a site named HQ in the acme.com domain, you’d type
set type=srv
_kerberos._tcp.hq._sites.dc._msdcs.acme.com

If you type the commands correctly, you might get a response like the one Figure 1 shows (don’t
worry if you don’t—that’s why we’re troubleshooting). But if those commands don’t work for you,
then Dcpromo won’t be able to log on either. Dcpromo would then say to DNS, “Tell me about
all the DCs in the world for acme.com.” You can also use Nslookup to simulate that query:
_kerberos._tcp.dc._msdcs.acme.com

But if your first query failed, this one likely will too, leading to a message resembling
ns1.yourisp.com can’t find kerberos._tcp.dc._msdcs.acme.com: Non-existent domain.
The reason for this problem in most test networks is that your AD domain (e.g., acme.com)
has the same name as a registered Internet domain, and that name conflict poses problems. To see
why, let’s roll back the clock to when you created the first DC in your test forest.

Figure 1:
Sample response from logon commands

Server: ns1.yourisp.com
Address: 200.200.10.10

_kerberos._tcp.headquarters._sites.dc._msdcs
.acme.com SRV service location:
priority =0
weight = 100
port = 88
svr hostname = dc1.acme.com
dc1.acme.com internet address = 192.168.1.4

The Origin of the Problem

When you use Dcpromo to create a new forest with a first domain named acme.com, Dcpromo
needs to write several records into the writable copy of the acme.com zone, which lives on the
domain’s primary DNS server. So, Dcpromo queries the local DNS server for the address of the pri-
mary DNS server for acme.com. Because you’re just playing around from home, your Win2K
server likely connects to the Internet through DSL or a cable modem and thus points to some DNS
server on the Internet. That DNS server happens to know about a registered Internet domain

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 6 Troubleshooting DNS-Related AD Logon Problems 43

named acme.com and responds that the primary acme.com server is some UNIX box on the
Internet.
Dcpromo then says to that distant server, “Hi. I’m about to write a bunch of new SRV records
to you with dynamic DNS (DDNS). That’s all right, isn’t it?” The UNIX server responds, “No! I don’t
know you, and I’m not about to let you write records into my zone.” That response, of course,
leaves Dcpromo in a quandary.
Instead of telling you that it has found the acme.com DNS server but the server doesn’t accept
updates, Dcpromo fibs by reporting that it couldn’t find the DNS server for acme.com and offers
an alternative: “Would you like me to configure a DNS server for this domain?” You say “Yes,”
grateful that Dcpromo is such a can-do kind of program. So, Dcpromo sets up the soon-to-be DC
as a DNS server, creates an acme.com zone on that server, uses that zone to set up acme.com,
then reboots. That’s when the trouble starts.

A Lack of Communication
When setting up a local DNS server, Dcpromo creates a zone with the same name as the
domain—acme.com, in my example. Thus, when you create a new AD domain, your computer
serves two functions: It’s both the first DC and the DNS server for the domain. But because
Dcpromo never tells the DC software that the DNS software exists on the same computer, the DC
still can’t find a DNS server that will accept dynamic updates for acme.com.
In other words, Dcpromo sets up the DNS server service and the acme.com zone but doesn’t
tell the computer’s TCP/IP stack to refer to itself when looking for a DNS server. The DNS server
is running, but no computer—not even the computer that the DNS server is running on—knows
that it needs to refer to that DNS server first when looking for a domain. So, Dcpromo completes
the basic domain setup, then asks for and receives permission to reboot the computer.
As it reboots, the computer sets up a TCP/IP stack just as you had set up the stack before you
made the computer a DC. At that time, you used DHCP either to configure the stack or set it up stat-
ically. If you used DHCP, the DHCP server is either your ISP’s DHCP server or your corporate DHCP
server. Regardless, the DHCP server is unlikely to tell your computer to use itself as a preferred DNS
server. If you originally configured your TCP/IP stack statically, did you tell the computer to use itself
as a preferred DNS server? Probably not. (But if you did, congratulations—good work!)
As a result, when the computer boots, its DHCP or static configuration tells the computer to
use some DNS server other than itself—probably some server on the Internet. Then, the Netlogon
service swings into action.
As on Windows NT 4.0, Netlogon on Win2K is an important service that runs only on DCs.
Among Netlogon’s first duties are to locate the primary DNS server for its domain (e.g., acme.com),
then to use DDNS to write the server identification (SRV) and host name (A) records for Netlogon
into the domain’s zone. The Netlogon service on each DC periodically reintroduces itself to the
domain’s DNS zone so that DNS knows about that DC. After the acme.com zone knows about a
DC, workstations and other DCs in acme.com can find that DC.
But when the acme.com DC’s TCP/IP stack points to a DNS server other than itself, a query
for the primary DNS server ends up on the public Internet’s DNS servers and returns the address
of the DNS server for the registered acme.com domain. When Netlogon tries to write records to
that UNIX DNS server, the server refuses the updates and Netlogon reports the problem in the

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

44 DNS and Windows 2000

System log as event ID 5773: The DNS server for this DC does not support dynamic DNS. Add the
DNS records from the file ‘%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\netlogon.dns’ to the DNS server serving
the domain referenced in that file.
If you can’t convince a workstation to log on to a new AD domain or if Dcpromo refuses to
run on a second machine that you intend to be another DC in your domain, check the System log
for event ID 5773. If Dcpromo told you that it would configure DNS for you, event ID 5773 is
proof that you need to point your DC’s TCP/IP stack to itself.
For further proof, start up the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) DNS snap-in, double-
click the icon for your server, open the Forward Lookup Zones folder, then double-click the folder
for your domain. A folder that contains only two or three records and no other folders indicates
that Netlogon couldn’t find the DNS server that’s running on the same computer as Netlogon. Con-
figure your computer’s TCP/IP settings to point to your computer as the preferred DNS server,
restart Netlogon, then again check the folder for your domain; it will contain four folders full of
find-a-DC information.

Adding a Second DC
But you’re still not out of the woods. Your first DC can now find itself, but a second DC won’t be
able to find the first one. After you put Win2K on a second machine and join that machine to
acme.com, you need to configure that machine’s TCP/IP stack to look to the first machine as its pre-
ferred DNS server. You can do the same for any systems that you want to make into additional DCs.
If you want your network to grow, you can make a few more Win2K servers into DNS servers
for acme.com. Because Dcpromo automatically makes the acme.com zone into an AD-integrated
zone, you can use only DCs as acme.com DNS servers. If you don’t want an AD-integrated zone—
perhaps because you want to use non-DCs as DNS servers in the domain—you can convert the
AD-integrated zone into a standard primary zone with a few clicks. Simply open the DNS snap-in,
double-click the DNS server’s icon, then open the Forward Lookup Zones folder. Inside, you’ll see
a folder labeled with your domain name. Right-click that folder, choose Properties, then click the
General tab. Click Change and select Standard primary instead of Active Directory-integrated.

Building It Right
By now, our DNS infrastructure is in pretty good shape. Let’s look at how to expand it to larger
networks. But instead of letting Dcpromo discover that a problem exists with DNS, let’s make sure
that DNS works from the start.
Suppose you actually work for acme.com and are going to set up AD for the company.
Would that be a simpler scenario? You’d just replace the existing DNS servers with servers that
accept dynamic updates, right? Probably not. AD stores information in a DNS zone that you might
not be comfortable advertising on the public Internet. So even if you work for acme.com, you’d
still want to fake out AD by letting it use an internal-only DNS, thereby causing AD to leave the
publicly visible DNS untouched. Such a setup is called split-brain DNS and is a good idea for any
enterprise, security-wise. Suppose Acme’s ISP hosts the publicly visible acme.com zone. Here’s
how you’d set up an internal-only DNS for acme.com’s AD.
First, set up at least one more DNS server on the acme.com intranet. On the first server that
you set up, make the acme.com DNS zone a standard primary zone and enable dynamic updates.
On any subsequent servers, set up acme.com as a standard secondary zone. (You can even use

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 6 Troubleshooting DNS-Related AD Logon Problems 45

NT 4.0 servers as secondary DNS servers in AD, provided that those NT servers run Service Pack
6a—SP6a.) Configure the TCP/IP stacks on each workstation and server in your intranet to use one
of your internal DNS servers as the preferred DNS server and another DNS server as the alternative
DNS server.
Now, when you run Dcpromo, it will find the acme.com DNS server that you want it to
find—your internal DNS server—and will set up AD correctly. Workstations and servers will be
able to find that DC to log them on, and when you run Dcpromo on other systems to create addi-
tional DCs, Dcpromo will run fine. After you set up AD, you can shift your zone to AD-integrated.
Now that you have two sets of books DNS-wise, you have only one more thing to do. If
someone inside Acme tries to find www.acme.com, that user will always find the zones on the
intranet server and won’t be able to find the public zone. So, be sure to manually copy the
records in the public zone to the intranet zones. If you don’t, you’ll discover that the only people
who can’t see Acme’s Web site are the people inside Acme, which makes for a strange situation.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

46 DNS and Windows 2000

Chapter 7

Scavenging Stale DNS Records

—by Mark Minasi

Because dynamic DNS (DDNS) and WINS are in many ways similar (both name-resolution systems
maintain a database that lets the system find a machine’s IP address, given the machine’s name), I
have a subliminal tendency to assume that all I need to do to plan for DDNS is dust off my Win-
dows NT 4.0 knowledge about WINS servers and replace all mention of WINS with DDNS and all
references to NT with Windows 2000. Although that bit of cognitive laziness isn’t entirely incorrect,
neither is it completely accurate. In Chapter 3, I highlighted some of the differences between how
WINS and DDNS add new records to their machine-name-to-IP-address databases. In this chapter,
I look at how DDNS lets you get rid of old records—stale records is the Win2K term—in its data-
base.
Before you continue, however, you should know that DDNS offers two ways to store that
database. The more traditional—and compatible with non-Win2K DNS servers—method is zone
files, and the newer method is known as Active Directory (AD)-integrated zones. I limit this
chapter to discussing traditional zone files.

A Time to Live
By default, when a machine registers its name and IP address in a DDNS database (i.e., the set of
zone files that the DNS server stores), DDNS remembers that information forever. DDNS stores the
information as a host record, also known as an A record. If a machine named mypc with an IP
address of 100.100.20.17 is in a DDNS domain named acme.com, mypc’s name record in the
acme.com zone file would look like
mypc 1200 IN A 100.100.20.17

Translated, this record says that the machine named mypc.acme.com has an IP address of
100.100.20.17. The term IN stands for Internet and represents the class of the DNS record, and the
A means that the record is a simple name-to-address record (DNS has many types of records).
The number 1200 in the name record is the Time to Live (TTL) value. The TTL value tells
other DNS servers how long they can expect the address to remain valid. For example, mypc’s
TTL value of 1200 tells another DNS server that it can expect mypc.acme.com to still have the
same address 1200 seconds (i.e., 20 minutes) from the time the DNS server reads the record. So,
the other server doesn’t need to recheck the address if the server needs the same information
again within 20 minutes. However, the server shouldn’t assume that the address information will
remain correct beyond that time.
The DDNS server doesn’t assign the TTL value; rather, the client computer (e.g., mypc) speci-
fies the TTL value when the client computer registers its name with the DDNS server. Note that
the TTL value doesn’t tell the DDNS server to delete the A record after the TTL expires—the TTL is

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 7 Scavenging Stale DNS Records 47

simply an instruction to other DNS servers advising them not to cache the A record for longer than
the specified time.

And a Time to Scavenge

Let’s assume that we boot mypc, which registers its A record with the primary DDNS server for the
acme.com zone. Then, we shut down mypc and never turn it on again. A year later, that A record
for mypc will still exist in the acme.com zone file because, by default, Win2K DDNS doesn’t elimi-
nate old records. But you can configure scavenging to change that behavior and direct Win2K’s
DDNS server to eliminate stale records of all types—not only A records.
To activate scavenging, you need to turn it on in several places. First, open the Microsoft Man-
agement Console (MMC) DNS snap-in and right-click the icon in the left-hand pane that represents
your DNS server. Choose Set Aging/Scavenging for all zones, and select the Scavenge stale
resource records check box in the Server Aging/Scavenging Properties dialog box. You’ll see No-
refresh interval and Refresh interval controls. I’ll discuss these intervals later; for now, simply use
the defaults. Click OK to clear the dialog box, then click OK again in the Server Aging/Scavenging
Confirmation dialog box. Repeat these steps for each zone.
Assuming your DNS server is the primary DNS server for the acme.com domain, double-click
the icon that represents the DNS server to see the Forward Lookup Zones folder. In that folder,
you’ll see another folder that represents the acme.com domain. Right-click the domain folder,
choose Properties, and click Aging on the General tab. Again, select the Scavenge stale resource
records check box and click OK, then click OK again.
Finally, right-click the icon that represents your DNS server, choose Properties, and click the
Advanced tab on the resulting properties page. Select the Enable automatic scavenging of stale
records check box, and you’re finished.

Scavenging Periods and Refresh Intervals

Now, let’s go back and look at what we did. If you visited all the dialog boxes that I described
above, you might have noticed three time intervals: Scavenging period, No-refresh interval, and
Refresh interval. (The Server Aging/Scavenging Properties dialog box contained only the no-refresh
interval and the refresh interval, but that dialog box seems to apply only to new zones. The No-
refresh interval and Refresh interval controls that appear on the dialog you raised by clicking Aging
on the zone’s Properties page seem to be the intervals that count.) Let’s examine how these three
intervals interact.
The scavenging period simply tells your DDNS server how often to look in its zone files for
records that are old or that are for computers that haven’t reregistered in a long time. You might
have records that have been stale for years, but the DNS server won’t delete them until the scav-
enging feature runs.
As I mentioned, Win2K DDNS lets you store a DNS zone’s information in AD. Because AD
replication can consume a lot of bandwidth, Microsoft was concerned that DDNS clients that fre-
quently reregistered with DDNS would set off a lot of AD replication. Consequently, Microsoft
incorporated the no-refresh interval into Win2K DDNS. Suppose you set the no-refresh interval to
5 days. If mypc registers its name and address with a DDNS server, that DDNS server will ignore
mypc’s attempts to reregister within 5 days. For example, if mypc registers at 9:00 A.M. Monday, it
won’t be able to reregister until 9:00 A.M. Saturday.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

48 DNS and Windows 2000

You can think of the refresh interval as defining the end of the no-scavenge period. Recall that
scavenging runs at a regular interval, which you can specify. When the scavenging routine runs, it
examines each record in a DNS zone and determines whether the record is stale. If it is, the scav-
enging feature deletes the record.
But what criterion does scavenging use to determine at what age a record becomes stale?
When a record is older than the sum of the no-refresh interval and the refresh interval, the scav-
enging feature considers the record stale and deletes it. So, when you set No-refresh interval to 3
days and Refresh interval to 5 days, scavenging will delete records that are more than 8 days old.

Setting Intervals
You can set the scavenging period to any value you want. However, keep in mind that scavenging
burns up CPU time. Thus, on one hand, the smaller the value (i.e., the more frequently you run
scavenging), the more scavenging will slow performance. On the other hand, a larger scavenging
interval lets stale records remain in the database longer. I’d err on the side of a larger value—say,
2 weeks or so.
On a network that’s fairly stable, I suggest setting the no-refresh interval to 1 week or 2 weeks
to minimize the morning rush to reregister with the domain’s primary DDNS server. Set the refresh
interval so that the sum of the no-refresh and refresh intervals (which I think of as the “mandatory
retirement age”) gives your system a chance to reregister.
Remember that the client, not the server, initiates reregistration, and ask yourself how often
your system will try to reregister. PCs reregister with DNS whenever their DHCP leases are
renewed; when the PC’s static IP address changes; when you reboot the system; every 24 hours, if
you leave the PC running for that long; or when you run the Ipconfig /registerdns command. So,
if you reboot your PC every day, your PC will attempt to reregister every day. If your system is
always running, it will reregister once a day. If you were to leave your system running and wait
for a DHCP renewal, reregistration would occur in 4 days (half the default of 8 days for a DHCP
lease under Win2K). But wait; if you left the system up all the time, the system would reregister
every 24 hours without waiting for the DHCP lease to expire. Thus, the longest time that mypc
would ever wait to try to reregister would be 1 day.
Of course, you don’t want the intervals to be too short. For example, if you set mypc’s no-
refresh interval and refresh interval both to 1 hour, DDNS records would expire after 2 hours,
leaving 22 hours before mypc tried to reregister. Obviously, that mandatory retirement age
wouldn’t work. The bottom line is this: No matter what value you choose for the no-refresh
interval, make sure that the sum of the refresh interval and the no-refresh interval exceeds 24
hours.
Do all these ins and outs make DDNS seem ugly? It isn’t, by WINS standards: WINS has more
complications for you to worry about, including four intervals and tombstoning. Win2K DDNS can
also scavenge reverse lookup zones, causing stale PTR records to expire. Overall, I’d say that
DDNS is a good thing compared with WINS.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 8 Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000 49

Chapter 8

Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000

—by Tao Zhou

DNS is a standard name-resolution mechanism that an IP host uses to name, advertise, and locate IP
hosts and services on the Internet and over an intranet. To fully integrate Windows 2000 into the Internet,
Microsoft used standard DNS rather than WINS as Win2K’s native naming service. In addition, Microsoft
has implemented dynamic DNS (DDNS) to let Win2K systems dynamically register their names and IP
addresses in a DDNS server. Dynamic updates of machine information eliminate the administrative
burden of maintaining a static database in a traditional DNS server. Win2K domain controllers (DCs) also
dynamically register their SRV records in DDNS servers. Clients in a Win2K network look up SRV records
in the DDNS server to locate the network’s Active Directory (AD) and its services (e.g., logon service).
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 2052 documents SRV
records, and RFC 2136 documents DDNS updates. SRV record and DDNS updates aren’t new to
the family of DNS standards—IETF published RFC 2052 in October 1996 and RFC 2136 in April
1997. However, Win2K’s use of these features challenges companies that have long run DNS on
UNIX machines to map host names and IP addresses. Most of these companies haven’t upgraded
to the most recent version of Internet Software Consortium’s (ISC’s) Berkeley Internet Name
Domain (BIND) 8.2.2 or to a new DNS version from their UNIX and DNS vendors that supports
both SRV record and dynamic updates. If this scenario describes your company and you’re plan-
ning a Win2K deployment, you face an immediate integration question: Should you migrate to
Win2K DNS or continue to use UNIX DNS? You have three options: migrate to Win2K DNS, create
an environment in which UNIX and Win2K DNS coexist, or use only UNIX DNS.
Before I delve into these options, I describe how Win2K uses SRV records to help you better
understand the benefits and drawbacks of each option and dispel any confusion about SRV records’
use of underscores. Understanding Win2K’s dynamic updates and how to examine your UNIX DNS
server’s dynamic update support will also help you decide which option is best for your company.

SRV Records in Win2K

Windows NT clients don’t need to specify an NT DC when they log on to an NT domain. NT
WINS provides a DC to the client for logon. This setup lets clients access an NT domain as long as
one DC is available, even if all other DCs have failed. Win2K inherited this functionality and lets
clients log on to an AD domain without specifying a DC. However, to provide this service to its
clients, Win2K uses DNS rather than WINS. (Win2K provides WINS for backward compatibility.)
When a Win2K client system logs on, it queries the DNS server for the DCs of the logon domain.
Win2K uses SRV records to locate the logon service, then sends the client the DCs’ names. The
client uses an available DC to log on to the AD domain.
SRV records provide a general mechanism for advertising and locating Internet services. For
example, suppose acme.com is your company’s Web server. Pointing an SRV record of _http._tcp

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

50 DNS and Windows 2000

.acme.com to webdev.acme.com lets you enable an SRV record-capable browser to use http://
acme.com instead of http://webdev.acme.com to access your Web server. The SRV record will
instruct the browser to use the webdev.acme.com server. This functionality means you don’t need a
Canonical Name (CNAME) of webdev.acme.com in the acme.com DNS domain, so you can easily
move the Web service from one server to another without a hassle. SRV records also enable load
balancing and fault tolerance when you associate two or more servers with the same service.
Let’s take a look at how Win2K uses SRV records. If the AD domain (i.e., DNS domain) acme.com
contains two DCs, w2kdc1 and w2kdc2, Win2K uses two SRV records for the Lightweight Direc-
tory Access Protocol (LDAP) service in the acme.com domain. The following SRV records advertise
and locate the two LDAP-enabled DCs in the acme.com domain: _ldap._tcp.acme.com. 600 IN SRV 0
100 389 w2kdc1.acme.com. and _ldap._tcp.acme.com. 600 IN SRV 0 100 389 w2kdc2.acme.com.
When a client queries _ldap_tcp.acme.com looking for a DC, acme.com’s DNS server will send the
client these two records. The client picks either w2kdc1.acme.com or w2kdc2.acme.com as the DC and
uses the LDAP protocol at TCP port 389 to communicate with the DC.
The client chooses a DC based on the parameters in the SRV records and the DCs’ availability. A
DNS server and Win2K system cache receive DNS records. The number that follows the protocol and
domain name (i.e., 600 in my example) is the caching Time to Live (TTL) value. For example, Win2K
can cache the records in my example for 600 seconds (i.e., 10 minutes). The number following SRV
(i.e., 0 in my example records) shows the record’s priority. The smaller the number, the higher the
priority. The number that follows the priority (i.e., 100 in my example records) shows the record’s
weight. The larger the number, the heavier the weight. If multiple same-service records have the
same priority but different weights, the client prefers a record with a heavier weight. If multiple
same-service records have the same priority and weight, the client communicates with the DCs in a
round-robin fashion. If the client can’t connect to a chosen DC, the client goes to the next preferred
DC. In this way, SRV records provide load balancing and fault tolerance.
Win2K also uses SRV records to advertise and locate DCs in a specific domain, DCs in a specific
site, a PDC in a specific domain (for a mixed-mode Win2K and NT installation), Global Catalog (GC)
servers in a specific domain, GC servers in a specific site, Kerberos Key Distribution Centers (KDCs)
in a specific domain, and Kerberos KDCs in a specific site. For a list of the SRV records that DCs reg-
ister in DNS, see the “DNS Record Registration and Resolver Requirements” section of the Microsoft
white paper “Windows 2000 DNS” at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/
technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/plan/w2kdns2.asp.
Some users complain about Microsoft’s use of underscores (_) in Win2K’s SRV records because
some UNIX DNS implementations don’t accept underscores. Microsoft isn’t to blame for the use of
underscores. In January 1999, IETF updated RFC 2052 in an Internet Draft. IETF subsequently
replaced RFC 2052 with RFC 2782 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2782.txt?number=2782). Microsoft
adopted the updated version for SRV records in Win2K because the new version replaced the old
RFC. In the new version, the IETF appends an underscore to SRV records’ service identifier and
protocol name to differentiate the service identifier and protocol name from other DNS labels. The
updated SRV record format is _service._protocol.domainname. TTL Class SRV RR Priority Weight
Port Host. Many UNIX DNS implementations, such as BIND 4.9.4 and later, check to ensure that
host names conform to RFC 952, a host-naming standard that doesn’t allow underscores in a host
name. However, the first part of the updated SRV record that contains underscores (formally called
the SRV record’s owner) isn’t a host name, so the underscores aren’t a problem. In addition, a DNS

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 8 Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000 51

implementation that conforms to RFC 952 doesn’t check host names against an SRV record’s owner,
and DNS domain names can contain underscores. In my experience, underscores in SRV records
haven’t posed a problem to BIND 8.2.2. If your version of UNIX DNS doesn’t accept underscores in
SRV records, change the check-names option on the UNIX DNS server from the default fail setting
to the warn setting or the ignore the underscores setting.

DDNS in Win2K
To install or promote a Win2K DC, the domain’s authoritative DNS server must support dynamic
updates to correctly register the DC’s AD and Netlogon services in DNS. The netlogon.dns file in
the C:\winnt\system32\config directory contains about 20 SRV record, A, and CNAME records that
the DC needs to register on a DNS server. Win2K lets you continue a DC installation if the OS dis-
covers that the DNS server doesn’t support dynamic updates, but you must manually enter the
records into the domain’s zone file on the DNS server after the installation. If you don’t want to use
a DDNS server, manually registering these records might work in a Win2K network that contains a
very small number of DCs. However, midsized and large networks should seriously consider using
Win2K’s DDNS or a third-party DDNS system to reduce the administrative burden of entering
records and eliminate the risk of introducing errors.
Win2K client systems also use dynamic updates. When it boots, a Win2K client that has a static
IP address will try to register its A and PTR records in its forward and reverse lookup zones on the
DDNS server. A workstation that uses DHCP to lease a dynamic IP address will try to register its A
record in the DDNS server when the workstation receives the IP address. The DHCP server will try
to register the workstation’s PTR record in the DDNS server for the workstation. To be backward
compatible, the Win2K DHCP server will register both A and PTR records of NT and Windows 9x
DHCP clients in the DDNS server. To fully use Win2K’s dynamic updates, you must have a DDNS
system in place when you deploy Win2K.
UNIX DNS can usually accept dynamic update requests of A, PTR, and some other kinds of
records. However, UNIX DNS might not support dynamic updates of SRV records. For example,
BIND 8.2.1 doesn’t support dynamic updates of SRV records, and early versions of BIND 8 are
unlikely to support dynamic updates of SRV records. To support Win2K, your UNIX DNS implemen-
tation must use BIND 8.2.2 or BIND 9.
To discover whether your UNIX DNS implementation supports dynamic updates of SRV
records, you can use the command-line Nsupdate utility that comes with BIND to make a dynamic
update of an SRV record. For example, create a test domain (e.g., acme.com) and its zone file in
your DNS server. Turn on the dynamic update option of the zone, and let any host dynamically
update the zone. Use the Nsupdate utility to manually generate a dynamic update of the SRV record
for the Web service in acme.com:
$ nsupdate
> update add webdev.acme.com. 86400 IN A 192.168.1.10
> update add _http._tcp.acme.com. 3600 IN SRV 0 1 80 webdev.acme.com.
>

The first command starts the Nsupdate tool, the second command adds the Web server’s A record, the
third command adds the Web service SRV record to the acme.com domain, and the last (blank) line
instructs Nsupdate to send the two dynamic updates you entered to the DNS server. After you run this

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

52 DNS and Windows 2000

command, if you can use Nslookup or look in acme.com’s zone file to find the two records in the
memory of the DNS server, your DNS server supports dynamic updates of SRV records. BIND tem-
porarily saves received dynamic updates in a zone log file, then modifies the zone file accordingly.

Option 1: Migration
After you check your UNIX DNS implementation for SRV record and dynamic update support,
you’ll likely discover that your implementation doesn’t provide this support. An easy way to sup-
port the deployment of Win2K in your company is to migrate your current DNS service to Win2K
DNS. Win2K DNS supports SRV records, dynamic updates, and AD integration.
The migration procedure is straightforward. You install a standalone Win2K server before you
install a DC and AD. Install Win2K’s DNS service on the standalone server from the Networking
Services dialog box. Copy the forward and reverse lookup zone files from your UNIX DNS server
to the C:\winnt\system32\dns directory on the new Win2K DNS server.
You can use FTP to transfer the files from UNIX to Win2K. If you’re not sure where the old
zone files are in the UNIX machine, the directory statement in the named.boot or named.conf file
in the /etc directory tells you which directory holds the zone files. UNIX DNS administrators often
use a filename that starts with db to represent a zone file (e.g., db.acme). By default, Win2K uses
a filename with a .dns extension to express a zone file (e.g., acme.com.dns), but you can use a
different file-naming convention or use the old UNIX DNS zone filenames in Win2K DNS.
If your AD domain name is different from the UNIX DNS domain name, you must switch to
the AD domain name for Win2K DNS. Change the old domain name in the copied zone files that
are now on the Win2K DNS server to the new domain name.
You’re now ready to create a new zone in the Win2K DNS administrative tool for each zone
file that you copied from your UNIX DNS server. After you enter the domain name (e.g.,
acme.com), the New Zone Wizard prompts you to create a new zone file or use an existing zone
file, as Figure 1 shows. Select the Use this existing file option, and enter the zone filename that
you copied from UNIX to Win2K or the zone filename that you modified from the UNIX zone file-
name, such as db.acme or acme.com.dns. In the next screen, you select this DNS server to be the
primary server that holds the master copy of the created zone. (BIND often calls this primary
server the primary master server.) After you migrate the old zone file to the Win2K DNS server,
you need to change the Allow dynamic updates setting to Yes in the General tab of the zone file’s
properties to enable dynamic updates for the zone. By default, Win2K sets this option to No. To
enable load balancing and fault tolerance, you need to set up at least one secondary DNS server
for each forward and reverse lookup zone.
With Win2K’s DNS service in place, you can implement AD. If you promote a Win2K server that
hosts the DNS server to a DC, you can integrate the DNS server into AD. All AD-integrated DNS
servers are primary master servers, which store the zone information in AD and replicate one another
through AD’s multimaster replication mechanism. An AD-integrated DNS server also supports secure
dynamic updates; this support lets you define which Win2K clients can perform a dynamic update.
If your intranet DNS servers are also your Internet name servers, you need to ask InterNIC
(http://www.internic.net) to change your domain registration to your new server names and IP
addresses. In addition, you need to ask the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN—
http://www.arin.net) to change your IN-ADDR registration to the new name servers for reverse
lookup on the Internet.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 8 Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000 53

Figure 1:
Creating a new Win2K DNS zone file

New Win2K clients and other clients can now use the new DNS servers. If you still have
clients that use DHCP, you simply change old DNS server addresses to the new DNS server
addresses in the DHCP server’s configuration. The old client receives the new DNS server
addresses the next time the client renews its IP address or the user restarts the computer.

Option 2: Coexistence
Most companies running a UNIX DNS service have heterogeneous OS environments that include Linux,
Novell NetWare, UNIX, and Windows systems. To minimize the interruption to non-Windows users
when you deploy Win2K, you can create a DNS subdomain and dedicate it to AD. AD doesn’t require
a two-level domain name such as acme.com. You can set up your AD root domain as a subdomain
(e.g., win2k.acme.com) in your company’s UNIX DNS hierarchy. In Figure 2, win2k is a subdomain of
the Acme Corporation’s existing DNS system. The win2k subdomain uses the Win2K DNS service.
For the Win2K DNS service to function in the new subdomain, you need to create a separate
DNS zone for the subdomain and delegate the subdomain to at least one Win2K DNS server. This
DNS server becomes an authoritative name server and provides DNS service for the subdomain. For
example, if you install two name servers, ns1.win2k.acme.com and ns2.win2k.acme.com, for the sub-
domain win2k.acme.com, you can delegate the subdomain to both name servers in the acme.com
domain. The two name servers become authoritative name servers for the subdomain win2k.acme
.com and provide fault tolerance and load balancing.
You complete the delegation by adding an NS record for the subdomain to the parent
domain’s zone file. For example, to delegate the subdomain win2k.acme.com to the name server
ns1.win2k.acme.com in the acme.com domain, you enter the following BIND statement in the
zone file of acme.com:

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

54 DNS and Windows 2000

Figure 2:
A Win2K subdomain in a UNIX DNS hierarchy

• root

com

UNIX DNS Service

acme

admin dev prod sales win2k

Win2k
DNS Service AD

win2k 86400 IN NS ns1.win2k.acme.com.

You also need to include an A record for the host ns1.win2k.acme.com in the acme.com zone file.
Next, you need to set up a reverse lookup zone for the Win2K subnet. If your Win2K systems
will reside on a separate subnet, you can use Win2K DNS servers to perform reverse lookups of
host names. If your Win2K and non-Windows computers reside on the same subnet, you need to
use your UNIX DNS systems as name servers for reverse lookup zones or switch to Win2K DNS. If
you don’t plan to use Win2K DHCP to dynamically register PTR records, you can continue to use
UNIX DNS for reverse lookup. If you plan to take advantage of Win2K DNS’s dynamic PTR record
updates and your UNIX DNS server doesn’t support this functionality, you need to switch to a
Win2K DNS server for reverse lookup.
Alternatively, Win2K and UNIX DNS servers can work together as primary and secondary
name servers for the same zone. For example, in Figure 2, the Win2K DNS server that primarily
serves the win2k subdomain can be a secondary name server for the acme.com zone. Using this
setup, a Win2K user in win2k.acme.com can quickly resolve a UNIX host name from the local
Win2K DNS server. If your UNIX DNS server supports SRV records, you can set up a UNIX name
server as a secondary name server of the AD domain. However, if the UNIX DNS server doesn’t
support dynamic updates, don’t make that server an authoritative name server for the zone. When a
DNS client sends a dynamic update to the zone’s authoritative name server, the authoritative server for-
wards the update to the zone’s primary master server for a zone update. If an authoritative name server
doesn’t support dynamic updates, it can’t understand or service an arriving dynamic update request. A
UNIX DNS server can be a secondary server to a Win2K DNS server even if the Win2K DNS server is
AD-integrated. However, an AD-integrated DNS server can’t be a secondary name server.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 8 Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000 55

Option 3: Only UNIX DNS

Companies that have long run UNIX DNS servers might regard the network naming service as a
part of UNIX administration and intend to use UNIX DNS throughout and after a Win2K deploy-
ment. If you’re managing the UNIX DNS service for such a company, you probably need to
upgrade your UNIX DNS servers to a version that supports SRV record and dynamic updates
because Win2K and AD require this support. BIND is the most popular UNIX DNS implementa-
tion, so I’ll focus on upgrading and using BIND to support Win2K. If you want to use an alterna-
tive UNIX DNS implementation, consult the vendor and request a new DNS version that supports
SRV records and dynamic updates.
Developers at the University of California at Berkeley originally wrote BIND. ISC now
maintains and develops BIND and has ported BIND to almost all UNIX platforms, including
Linux. ISC has also ported BIND 8.2.2 to NT. BIND 9 changed the underlying BIND architec-
ture to support fast-growing Internet zones (e.g., .com) and include additional new features. As
I discussed previously, BIND 8.2.2 and later fully supports Win2K. (Because of security vulnera-
bilities, you should use the most recent BIND versions—currently 8.3.4 and 9.2.2.) BIND is
open-source freeware that you can download from ISC’s FTP server (ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/
bind/src).
After you unzip and tar (i.e., archive) the BIND distribution file, you’ll find BIND source code
located in the src directory under the directory you saved the BIND distribution file in. In the src/port
directory, you’ll find about 20 directories, such as solaris and winnt. Each OS-named directory con-
tains a makefile file that lets you use a C compiler from your OS vendor or GNU’s GCC compiler
(http://www.gnu.org/directory/gnu/gcc.html) to easily compile BIND for your OS platform. The
INSTALL file in the src directory includes instructions for compiling and installing BIND for your OS.
BIND 8.x uses a different configuration filename than BIND 4.x uses. In BIND 4.x, the configura-
tion file is named.boot, and in BIND 8.x, the configuration file is named.conf. This file specifies the
location of zone files, sets global and zone-specific parameters, and instructs the BIND server to read
and load zone files when the named daemon starts. This file is often in the /etc directory. BIND 8.x
also uses a different syntax in named.conf than BIND 4.x uses in named.boot. Listing 1 shows an
example of a BIND 8.2.2 named.conf file. If you upgraded from BIND 4.x to BIND 8.2.2, you need to
convert named.boot to named.conf. Fortunately, BIND 8.2.2 offers a bind-bootconf shell script in the
src/bin/namedbootconf directory to convert named.boot to named.conf without a manual modification.
By default, BIND 8.2.2 disables dynamic updates. You must enable the dynamic update
function per zone. To enable dynamic updates in a zone, you need to add an allow-update
{address_match_list} statement to the zone’s section of BIND’s named.conf file. You can use an
existing zone or create a new zone based on your AD design. The IP addresses in the allow-
update address match list tell the system which hosts in the list to authenticate for dynamic
updates. For example, in Listing 1, named.conf allows only hosts in the subnet 192.168.1/24 to
dynamically update the forward lookup zone acme.com and reverse lookup zone 1.168.192.in-
addr.arpa. However, this authentication method doesn’t fend off attacks. Attackers can use a
host listed in the address match list to attack a dynamic zone by sending a dynamic update
request that deletes an important record or all records in the zone. To ensure DNS data
authentication and integrity, RFC 2065 implemented DNS Security (DNSSEC) extensions in
BIND 8.2.2. Unfortunately, Win2K doesn’t support DNSSEC, so you can’t use DNSSEC in BIND
8.2.2 in a Win2K deployment.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

56 DNS and Windows 2000

Listing 1:
A Sample BIND 8.2.2 Configuration File

# zone files are stored at directory /usr/local/named

# allow zone transfer to server 198.168.1.10
# allow any computer to query this name server
options {
directory “/usr/local/named”;
allow-transfer { 198.168.1.10; };
allow-query { any; };
};

# this name server is the primary master of the forward zone acme.com
# the zone file is db.acme
# allow dynamic updates of the zone from the subnet 192.168.1.0
zone “acme.com” {
type master;
file “db.acme”;
allow-update { 192.168.1/24; };
};

# this name server is the primary master of the reverse zone 1.68.192.in-addr.arpa
# the zone file is db.192.168.1
# allow dynamic updates of the zone from the subnet 192.168.1.0
zone “1.168.192.in-addr.arpa” {
type master;
file “db.192.168.1”;
allow-update { 192.168.1/24; };
};

# specify the root hint file that contains Internet root DNS server addresses zone “.” {
type hint;
file “root.cache”;
};

# forward zone for localhost

zone “localhost” {
type master;
file “localhost”;
};

# reverse zone for localhost

zone “0.0.127.in-addr.arpa” {
type master;
file “db.127.0.0”;
};

The format of a zone file in BIND 4.x and BIND 8.x is the same. However, to support negative
caching of DNS queries (functionality that RFC 2308 standardized), BIND 8.2 and later use the sev-
enth parameter in a System Object Access (SOA) record (i.e., minimum TTL) as an explicit negative
caching TTL parameter. If a DNS resolver tries to query a nonexistent record, the negative caching
TTL parameter tells the DNS resolver how long to cache the information stating that the Resource
Record (RR) doesn’t exist. BIND 8.1 and earlier versions that don’t support RFC 2308 traditionally
use the minimum TTL parameter as the default positive caching TTL value for RRs without an
explicit TTL value. This positive caching TTL parameter lets a DNS resolver cache a resolved record
in the amount of time that the parameter specifies. When you use an old zone file (i.e., a BIND 8.1
or earlier zone file) for BIND 8.2.2, you need to add a $TTL directive (e.g., $TTL 86400) to specify a
default positive caching TTL value in the zone file. The $TTL directive placed before the SOA
record becomes the default positive caching TTL value for all records in that zone. If you don’t add

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 8 Integrating UNIX DNS with Windows 2000 57

a $TTL directive, BIND 8.2.2 uses the negative caching TTL value as the positive caching TTL value,
and the negative caching TTL value is usually much smaller than the positive caching TTL.
After you make necessary changes to the named.conf file and zone files, you can start or restart the
named daemon so that it uses the new configuration and zone files. You might want to use the BIND
Nsupdate utility first to ensure that your DNS server supports dynamic updates. After you verify your
server’s support, your BIND DNS server is ready to accept dynamic updates from Win2K systems.
When BIND receives a dynamic update, it saves the update in a log file whose name corresponds with
the zone name (e.g., db.acme.log) and updates the DNS data in memory. BIND updates the zone file
periodically (about once an hour) and removes the old log file when BIND commits the update. In this
way, BIND aggregates dynamic updates to a batch process rather than updating the zone file every
time BIND receives a dynamic update. This mechanism can simultaneously handle numerous updates.
When you use dynamic updates for a zone in BIND, don’t manually modify the zone file.
BIND sets the zone file attribute to read-only after it updates the zone, so any manual changes you
make between zone updates will be lost. If you need to add, remove, or modify a record, you can
use the Nsupdate utility to manually send a dynamic update request to the zone.
BIND 8.2 and later support incremental zone transfer (RFC 1995 defines this function-
ality), which lets a secondary name server (a slave name server in BIND 8.x terminology)
transfer only changes rather than an entire update. The BIND master server maintains the
changes between one SOA serial number and the next in a zone’s .ixfr file (e.g., db.acme
.ixfr). When a slave server requests an incremental zone transfer, the master server transfers
only the changes. Win2K DNS supports incremental zone transfer.

Ready, Set, Go
Now that you have a better understanding of Win2K’s DNS requirements, you can decide
which option will work best to integrate your UNIX DNS service and Win2K. After you set
up a functional DNS infrastructure that supports SRV record and dynamic updates, you’re
ready to deploy Win2K and AD. This setup lets you take advantage of Win2K’s enhance-
ments and build your network applications around AD.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

58 DNS and Windows 2000

Chapter 9

Maximizing BIND DNS Security

—by Tao Zhou

No company can afford to ignore the security of its DNS service, the crucial service that provides
host-name and IP address resolution on the Internet. Although Windows 2000 provides a built-in
DNS service, Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is the most widely used DNS software on
the Internet, and many Win2K administrators use BIND to maintain their Internet DNS servers. You
can use BIND access-control settings to implement a basic layer of protection. However, those set-
tings don’t address two important security concerns: data authentication and data integrity. To be
truly secure, a DNS client or server must communicate only with a trusted DNS server and must
authenticate received data. Authentication involves confirming that no one has intercepted a query
reply and changed its content during its transmission over the Internet.
To help companies guarantee data authentication and integrity, the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) launched development of the DNS Security (DNSSEC) Internet standard, which uses
public key and digital signature technologies that developers can apply in their DNS software imple-
mentations. The IETF also developed the Transaction Signature (TSIG) DNS transaction-authentication
protocol, which uses shared secret key technology to help secure DNS transactions. (IETF Request for
Comments—RFC—2535 and RFC 3008 discuss DNSSEC; RFC 2845 deals with TSIG. For more informa-
tion about DNSSEC, you can also visit NLnet Labs’ DNSSEC resources Web site at http://www
.nlnetlabs.nl/dnssec.)
The Internet Software Consortium (ISC), which develops and maintains BIND source codes, has
incorporated DNSSEC and TSIG in BIND 8.2.3 and later and in BIND 9.1.0 and later. The newer BIND
9 versions have better support for DNSSEC and TSIG than do the BIND 8 versions. Both generations
can generate public and private keys, but BIND 9.1.0 has extended zone-signing capabilities. There-
fore, this chapter focuses on implementing DNSSEC and TSIG in BIND 9.1.3. (The ISC hasn’t imported
BIND 9.2.0 or later into Win2K or Windows NT yet, but you can run BIND 9.1.0 on most UNIX and
Linux platforms. Also, BIND 9.2.2 supports Win2K and NT.) This chapter assumes you have a basic
knowledge of BIND, digital signature technology, and shared secret key technology.

DNSSEC Basics
Implementing DNSSEC on your BIND DNS server involves signing the server’s DNS domain zone
file. (I explain that process later.) DNSSEC then uses digital signature technology to sign each record
in the zone. When a DNS client queries a specific DNS record, the DNS server replies with the
signed version of the requested record. The DNS client then uses digital signature technology to con-
firm the data integrity of the received record and to authenticate the DNS server. To support digital
signature technology, DNSSEC introduces two new DNS Resource Records (RRs): SIG and KEY. The
security protocol also introduces the NXT RR to help authenticate nonexistent DNS records.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 9 Maximizing BIND DNS Security 59

The SIG RR
A SIG RR contains the digital signature for each original RR (e.g., Start of Authority—SOA, NS, A,
PTR, MX, CNAME). In a signed zone, DNSSEC associates each original RR with a SIG RR to form a
record set. Listing 1 shows the zone file for an unsigned, unsecured zone, us.example.com. Figure 1
shows the zone file for the corresponding secure, signed zone. As Figure 1 shows, a SIG RR fol-
lows each original RR in the signed zone. A SIG RR’s syntax is
corresponding_RR_type
signing_algorithm
number_of_owner_labels
original_TTL signature_expiration
signature_inception key_tag signer signature

For example, callout D in Figure 1 shows the SIG RR for www.us.example.com’s A record. This
output shows that the SIG RR corresponds to an A RR and that DNSSEC used Digital Signature
Algorithm (DSA) to sign the original RR. (RFC 2535 discusses the possible signing algorithms: 1 is
RSA/Message Digest 5—MD5, 2 is Diffie-Hellman, and 3 is DSA.) The A RR’s owner (i.e.,
www.us.example.com) has four labels (i.e., www, us, example, and com). The original Time to
Live (TTL) value of the A RR is 86400 seconds (i.e., 1 day), the signature expires at 6:10:13 Green-
wich Mean Time (GMT) on April 3, 2001 (i.e., 20010403061013), and the signature became valid at
6:10:13 GMT on March 4, 2001 (i.e., 20010304061013). The key tag (i.e., a number that identifies
the zone’s public and private key pair) is 51297. The signer is us.example.com, and the final
strange string is the signature.

LISTING 1:
Sample Unsecured Zone

$TTL 1D
$ORIGIN us.example.com.
@ IN SOA us.example.com. root.us.example.com. (
2001030301
2H
1H
1W
1D )
IN NS ns1.us.example.com.
ns1 IN A 192.168.1.10
mail IN MX 10 www.us.example.com.
www IN A 192.168.1.11
A $INCLUDE Kus.example.com.+003+51297.key

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

60 DNS and Windows 2000

Figure 1:
Sample signed zone

; dnssec_signzone version 9.1.0

us.example.com. 86400 IN SOA us.example.com. root.us.example.com. (
2001030301 ; serial
7200 ; refresh (2 hours)
3600 ; retry (1 hour)
604800 ; expire (1 week)
86400 ; minimum (1 day)
)
86400 SIG SOA 3 3 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CCpoka7cWxbbZA2bWXDkX3oXDfgLb30oout1
NOGcLr6DdtOCj4y+XZk= )
86400 NS ns1.us.example.com.
86400 SIG NS 3 3 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CDMXm3yoT2w54lh6ciOO5X2B57LlAC5gjTH6
NOoal5EsQRx04mr1V2s= )
A 86400 KEY 256 3 3 (
CJHScmcPQm31yH4H0iDgBZWhT1lB7Vy02kOT
uJCDmEDlfTmKJTJiB0DxCVnDMDhipviVIv+g
Bx1h4/OtMAC8BsxTorwQqZIy7FDgpP1f6+Zg
E4OPbn3TNHw11TFGAmjKf0Y98sJ/uQ1uFRAH
VFeDZysCAevcMuG7VjPeQOeHamQFeiWd0JmK
vKt4iudlNdzdNesRcJEmORCkpLgDne9nlyGE
B7tWAarq7kTHFCjyppMBt1yC1FtmD5hJ2U31
WPZyErWQnDMCSV65ykDNDXXhk9sAH2WSjjCE
pGbLfZXBJuVQFAPc96hSaBdDhRsLW5+ZjV77
OelaVa+o85TVjBpBYW/xLRZ9ffeODKdYlT1P
SdB2zKCSe094qjuXd9y4D7qVxs3RaZfCm4Zw
s38LhyLfvUUJMaI24EbPXFLaqiS1ggStf7rL
80UVH4Zv1ZcsDQrCM7lmhGnGENJwq1Zki2rS
Y2KoSpfasxwZYzGxf5AQ1vlOHRw0Z41DaTNp
R+/AaogpOjYcYyMLLG/iP+V1zhImVpMKrJuG ) ; key id = 52324
B 7200 SIG KEY 3 3 7200 20011231235959 (
20010304053427 47063 example.com.
CF8nfzUST+NAxh3PWAKZWylkWp93D32pYIHw
jjAQzVxr0e839TpWo7c= )
86400 NXT mail.us.example.com. NS SOA SIG KEY NXT
86400 SIG NXT 3 3 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.e 86400 SIG NXT 3 4
86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CDgqDuyVkWz175PwtMZQ4NN90vH2KfW4tsEt
hJwvgkakqAL8s/PQmLw= )
ns1.us.example.com.
86400 IN A 192.168.1.10
86400 SIG A 3 4 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CB+byYi5uAaVYSql8NA1aEKqAO7OUgApAWP2
Q5SF4DJtEJv/5HtXPt0= )
C 86400 NXT www.us.example.com. A SIG NXT
86400 SIG NXT 3 4 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CIJ3JKWo2NXNJGET8etRH3zcwgJCWy06vQ3N
zydr1CXSsVnJikh0KOE= )
www.us.example.com.
86400 IN A 192.168.1.11
D 86400 SIG A 3 4 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CItxQaCMNQHXq9HP+r5hW3S/I/YHOdODMKq+
NN8APYzW12Svq23Z078= )
86400 NXT us.example.com. A SIG NXT
86400 SIG NXT 3 4 86400 20010403061013 (
20010304061013 51297 us.example.com.
CD4KEvDhYmzAggi8eQVw956eK2hddroRsQOM
Yaxcof8o13zVkybYHSM= )

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 9 Maximizing BIND DNS Security 61

The KEY RR
You use a zone’s private key (from its public and private key pair) to sign the zone during
DNSSEC implementation. You keep the private key secret, and the KEY RR stores the public key,
which a DNS client uses to verify the signatures of received DNS records. DNSSEC provides a cor-
responding SIG RR for each KEY RR, but the parent zone signs the KEY RR. For example, the
parent zone example.com would sign a KEY RR in the signed zone us.example.com. The KEY
RR’s syntax is
flags protocol algorithm public_key

Flags indicate the type of the included key and how to use it. For example, callout A in Figure 1
shows us.example.com’s KEY RR. This output shows that the key is a zone key and is used only
for authentication. The protocol is DNSSEC (represented by the number 3), the signing algorithm is
DSA (represented by the number 3), and the final string is the zone’s public key. (RFC 2535 dis-
cusses the meanings of the KEY RR’s options.) The KEY RR’s corresponding SIG RR, which callout
B in Figure 1 shows, defines the signer of the KEY RR (i.e., us.example.com’s parent zone,
example.com).

The NXT RR
The SIG and KEY RRs are strong enough to authenticate existing DNS records, but DNSSEC
wouldn’t be truly secure without a mechanism to authenticate nonexistent records. For example,
consider the unsecured www.us.example.com zone file that Listing 1 shows. If a client queries a
nonexistent record, product.us.example.com, the DNS server running the unsecured zone will
return the SOA RR and an NXDOMAIN error, which indicates that the queried record doesn’t exist.
If DNSSEC used the same method to reply to such a query—even if DNSSEC provided a cor-
responding SIG RR for the signed SOA RR—an intruder could easily wreak havoc. The intruder
could query the zone or listen to the wire to determine us.example.com’s SOA and corresponding
SIG RRs. Then, when a client queried the DNS server for the existing record
www.us.example.com, the intruder could send that client the SOA and SIG RRs and the NXDO-
MAIN error before the DNS server could respond. The client would verify the SOA RR’s signature
and determine that www.us.example.com didn’t exist.
To prevent such problems, DNSSEC introduced the NXT RR, which indicates the record-owner
names that don’t exist within a specified name interval. (For example, if a client knows that within
the name interval 1 through 4, the current record is 1 and the next record is 4, the client can infer
that the records 2 and 3 are nonexistent.)
DNSSEC arranges a signed zone’s record sets in canonical order (i.e., zone name, wildcard—
*—record—if any, then the other records in alphabetical order) and inserts a NXT RR for each
record. A NXT RR’s syntax is
next_record_owner record_types_
in_current_set

For example, ns1.us.example.com’s NXT RR, which callout C in Figure 1 shows, states that the next
record’s owner name is www.us.example.com and that the current record (i.e., ns1.us.example.com)
contains the RR types A, SIG, and NXT. From this NXT RR, the client can determine that no other
records exist between ns1.us.example.com and www.us.example.com. A zone’s final NXT RR always

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

62 DNS and Windows 2000

points back to the zone’s first record (i.e., the zone name). DNSSEC signs each NXT RR with an asso-
ciated SIG RR, and the NXT record’s syntax prevents intruders from using the NXT RR to make a
client believe an existing record doesn’t exist.

Using DNSSEC in BIND

To use DNSSEC in BIND 9.1.3, you must set up a secure zone on a BIND 9.1.3 server. This pro-
cess involves four steps: generating keys, creating a keyset, signing the child zone’s keyset, and
signing the zone.

Generating Keys
A secure zone must have one or more public and private key pairs, called zone keys. You use the
zone’s private key to sign the zone. DNS clients use the corresponding public key to verify signa-
tures. When the parent zone (e.g., example.com) delegates a secure child zone (e.g., us.example
.com), you can use the parent zone’s private key or keys to sign the child zone’s key or keys. If
the parent zone has multiple key pairs, you can use different keys to sign the parent and child
zones’ key or keys.
You use the dnssec-keygen command to generate keys on a BIND 9.1.3 server. (Enter the
command without any parameters to see command-usage information.) For example, to generate a
key pair for the child zone us.example.com in Listing 1, enter the following command on the
BIND server:
dnssec-keygen -a DSA -b 1024 -n ZONE us.example.com.

The -a option defines which digital signature algorithm the generated keys will use. According to
RFC 2535, DSA is the mandatory algorithm for DNSSEC interoperability, but BIND 9.1.3 also sup-
ports Diffie-Hellman, Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC)-MD5, RSA, and RSA/MD5. The -
b option specifies the key length (1024 bits in this example). The -n option defines the keys’ name
type, which can be zone, host, entity, or user. The final parameter in the sample command is the
key name, which must be the same as the zone name if the specified name type is zone.
The dnssec-keygen command also lets you choose the protocol that the generated keys will sup-
port; DNSSEC is the default. The command automatically saves the generated keys in two output files
in the current directory; the parameters you use in the command determine the filenames. The
sample command would store the public key in the file Kus.example.com.+003+51297.key and store
the private key in the file Kus.example.com.+003+51297.private. The first number set represents the
digital algorithm (in this example, DSA, which DNSSEC represents by the number 3). The second
number set (51297 in this example) is the key tag, which distinguishes the keys from other key pairs
and appears in the signed zone’s SIG records. You need to protect the private key file and keep it
secret, but you need to include the public key filename in the child zone’s unsecured zone file, as
callout A in Listing 1 shows.

Creating a Keyset
Before the parent zone can sign a child zone’s public key, you need to create a keyset containing
the child zone’s public key that the parent zone can recognize and sign. You use the dnssec-
makekeyset command to create this keyset. For example, the command
dnssec-makekeyset -t 7200 -e 20011231235959 Kus.example.com.+003+51297

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 9 Maximizing BIND DNS Security 63

creates a keyset for the child zone us.example.com. The -t option defines the SIG and KEY records’
TTL value. The sample command specifies the TTL as 7200 seconds; 3600 seconds is the default. The
-e option defines the end time of the parent zone’s signature. The sample command specifies that
the signature expires at 23:59:59 on December 31, 2001 (i.e., 20011231235959); the default signature
end time is 30 days after the start time. (The sample command accepts the default signature start
time, which is now, but you can use the -s option to specify a start time.) The command saves the
keyset output file as keyset-zone. in the current directory. (The ending period is part of the filename.)
For example, the output file keyset-us.example.com. would result from the sample command.

Signing the Child Zone’s Keyset

Next, you need to submit the child zone’s keyset to the parent zone so that the parent zone can
sign the keyset. The parent zone uses the dnssec-signkeyset command to sign a child zone’s
keyset. For example, to instruct the parent zone example.com to sign the child zone us.example
.com’s keyset, use the command
dnssec-signkeyset keyset-us.example.com. Kexample.com.+003+47063

By default, the command uses the signature start and end times you specified when you created
the child zone’s keyset, but you can use the -s and -e options to overwrite those times. The final
parameter is the parent zone’s key tag. The command saves the signed keyset output file as
signedkey-zone. in the current directory. (The ending period is part of the filename.) For example,
the output file signedkey-us.example.com. would result from the sample command. The parent
zone then needs to securely ship this output file to the child zone; store the output file in the
same directory as you store the child zone’s keys.

Signing the Zone

Now, you can sign the child zone. To do so, you use the dnssec-signzone command. For
example, to sign the unsigned child zone us.example.com that Listing 1 shows, use the command
dnssec-signzone -o us.example.com /usr/local/etc/db.us.example

The -o option specifies the zone name (i.e., us.example.com). The second parameter is the full
path of the zone file (i.e., /usr/local/etc/db.us.example). This sample command creates an output
file named /usr/local/etc/db.us.example.signed. To instruct the BIND 9.1.3 DNS server to load the
secure zone file, you need to include the signed zone filename in us.example.com’s named.conf
file. If you update a zone file after you’ve signed the zone, you need to resign the zone.
DNSSEC provides reliable security for DNS transfers. The sidebar “A Secure Transaction” pre-
sents examples of such transactions for the DNSSEC-secured zone that Figure 1 shows.

Using TSIG in BIND

BIND’s DNSSEC implementation is powerful, but to be effective, it requires DNSSEC-enabled clients
and a public key infrastructure (PKI) on the Internet. But Windows client computers don’t support
DNSSEC, and the Internet doesn’t have a PKI infrastructure in place. Until the Internet can more fully
support DNSSEC, you can use TSIG to authenticate DNS transactions between two hosts.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

64 DNS and Windows 2000

A Secure Transaction
When a DNS client queries the sample record www.us.example.com, the DNS Security
(DNSSEC) server running the secure zone us.example.com sends the client www.us
.example.com’s original A Resource Record (RR) with its corresponding SIG RR and the
zone’s KEY RR with its SIG RR. If the client is DNSSEC-enabled, it first checks the signa-
ture-validation time in the A RR’s corresponding SIG RR. If the signature starting time is
later than the current time or if the signature expiration time is earlier than the current
time, the client rejects the A RR. If the signature-validation time is acceptable, the client
then uses the public key and the algorithm in the KEY RR to verify the signature in the
A RR’s SIG RR.
After validating the A RR’s signature, the client verifies us.example.com’s public key
signature (which the client used to check the integrity of the A RR). The parent zone
example.com signed us.example.com’s public key, so the client requests example.com’s
public key (if the client doesn’t already have the key locally or in its cache). If the client
trusts example.com’s public key and thus verifies the validity of us.example.com’s public
key, the client then accepts that the query response is truly from us.example.com.
The verification of the signer’s public key can be recursive until the client finds a
trusted signer. In DNSSEC, this trusted signer could be the Internet root zone running on
the Internet root DNS servers. Therefore, you should preconfigure at least one trusted
key in a DNSSEC-enabled client’s local computer. This key can be the Internet root
zone’s public key if the client trusts only the root zone.
Suppose a client queries the signed zone us.example.com for a nonexistent record,
product.us.example.com. The zone us.example.com doesn’t contain that record, so the
DNS server instead sends the client the record ns1.us.acme.com, which is the record that
falls alphabetically before the requested nonexistent record. The NXT record in ns1.us
.example.com indicates that the next record is www.us.example.com. Thus, the client
can ascertain that no record exists between ns1.us.example.com and www.us.example
.com—product.us.example.com doesn’t exist.

In TSIG, two hosts (i.e., two DNS servers or a DNS server and a DNS client) share a secret key
and use an MD algorithm to authenticate a DNS message transaction. TSIG doesn’t use presigned
zone files, as DNSSEC uses. When a TSIG-enabled host sends a message packet, the host generates a
signature for the packet. The signature is good only for that transaction. TSIG’s shared secret key tech-
nology means that multiple hosts share the same secret key. This type of key is easier to compromise
than the public and private keys that DNSSEC uses, so TSIG isn’t as secure as DNSSEC.
You can use TSIG to authenticate such DNS message transactions as query requests and
responses, dynamic updates, and zone transfers. For example, you can use TSIG between your
DNS servers and your ISP’s or business partners’ DNS servers to secure those communications. If
your BIND server runs a dynamic DNS (DDNS) zone, you can use TSIG to authenticate dynamic
updates from clients, DHCP servers, and other servers that support TSIG. This type of authentica-

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 9 Maximizing BIND DNS Security 65

tion for dynamic updates is more secure than IP address authentication. You can also use TSIG to
authenticate zone transfers from the primary DNS server to secondary DNS servers. BIND 8.2.4 and
9.1.3 primarily support TSIG for server-to-server communication. These BIND versions’ dynamic
update tool, Nsupdate, also supports TSIG through use of a secret key option.
Suppose you want to use TSIG between two hosts, host1 and host2. You first need to gen-
erate a secret key for the hosts. To do so, you can use the dnssec-keygen command
dnssec-keygen -a HMAC-MD5 -b 128 -n HOST host1-host2.

As I explained earlier, this command’s -a option defines the digital signature algorithm that the
generated key will use. RFC 2845 specifies HMAC-MD5 as the mandatory algorithm for TSIG inter-
operability, and BIND supports only HMAC-MD5 for TSIG. You can use a key length as long as
512 bits for HMAC-MD5. (The example uses a key length of 128 bits.) The key name in this
example is host1-host2. (the ending period is part of this name). The output private key file con-
tains the generated secret key. For example, the sample command creates the private key file
Khost1-host2.+157+59290.private. The Key: line in that file contains the secret key. You need to
securely deliver this key to both hosts.
If host1 and host2 are both BIND servers, you need to add the key statement that Listing 2
shows to both servers’ named.conf files. To protect the key statement, you must restrict read
access to named.conf so that only the root account can read the file.
A better option is to maintain a separate file that contains only key statements, protect that file,
then include that filename in named.conf. That way, you don’t need to restrict named.conf.
To permit host1 (IP address 192.168.1.10) to use the key and TSIG when sending a message
to host2 (IP address 192.168.2.10), add the server statement that Listing 3 shows to host1’s
named.conf file. Add the server statement that Listing 4 shows to host2’s named.conf file.
If host2 dynamically updates a dynamic zone on host1, you can use the TSIG key to authenti-
cate host2 and its request. To do so, use an allow-update statement, which Listing 5 shows, in
host1’s named.conf file.

LISTING 2:
Sample Key Statement in Named.conf

key host1-host2. {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret “Rfya3QvNbZ/o9Yl8/qNgKdv++3iIqCoShp2rRA==”;
};

LISTING 3:
Sample Server Statement in Host1’s Named.conf

server 198.168.2.10 {
keys { host1-host2. ;};
};

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

66 DNS and Windows 2000

LISTING 4:
Sample Server Statement in Host2’s Named.conf

server 198.168.1.10 {
keys { host1-host2. ;};
};

LISTING 5:
Sample Allow-Update Statement in Named.conf

allow-update { key host1-host2. ;};

Looking Forward
DNS is a fundamental Internet service. Any Web services that require host-name resolution depend
on DNS. Without a secure DNS service, these Web services aren’t secure. Although DNSSEC isn’t
yet widely deployed on Internet clients, BIND’s rich set of security tools, including DNSSEC and
TSIG, can help you secure your DNS service. Fault-Tolerant Mesh of Trust Applied to DNSSEC
(FMESHD), a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project with the objective of
deploying DNSSEC on the Internet, is building a DNSSEC testbed for organizations to use. (For
more information about this testbed, visit http://fmeshd.nge.isi.edu.) You can also use DNSSEC
within your intranet without needing to establish a trust relationship with other companies.
TSIG can help you secure transactions with hosts that don’t yet support DNSSEC, and several
other IETF protocols can enhance TSIG’s capabilities. The Secret Key Establishment for DNS
(TKEY) RR, which IETF RFC 2930 describes, automates TSIG secret key generation and exchange.
The DNS Request and Transaction Signatures, or SIG(0), which IETF RFC 2931 describes, uses
public keys to authenticate DNS requests and transactions. BIND 9.1.0 through 9.1.3 have some
limited TKEY and SIG(0) functions but provide no documentation for these functions. I expect
TKEY and SIG(0) to be fully implemented in a future BIND version.
At the time of this writing, Win2K’s DNS service doesn’t support DNSSEC but offers limited support
for TSIG. (Windows Server 2003’s DNS has basic support for DNSSEC but as a secondary DNS server.
For more information, see “Using DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC)” at http://www.microsoft.com
/resources/documentation/IIS/6/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_DNS_imp_DNSSECsupport.asp.) Win2K
DNS supports secure dynamic updates in an Active Directory (AD)-integrated dynamic DDNS zone.
Microsoft bases Win2K DNS’s implementation of secure dynamic updates on the company’s proposed
IETF draft “GSS Algorithm for TSIG (GSS-TSIG)”; at the time of this writing, you can view the most
recent draft at http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf-announce-old/Current/msg17757.html. To extend
TSIG, GSS for TSIG applies the Generic Security Service API (GSS-API—see IETF RFC 2078 for informa-
tion about this API).

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 10 DNS FAQs 67

Chapter 10

DNS FAQs
Q. How do I rename a Windows 2000 domain’s DNS name?

A. To rename a Win2K domain’s DNS name, your domain must meet the following conditions:
• Your domain must be in mixed mode.
• You must have at least one Windows NT 4.0 BDC or have the ability to create an NT 4.0
BDC.
Renaming the DNS name requires you to demote all Win2K domain controllers (DCs) to servers
and temporarily promote the BDC to the PDC. Keep in mind the following considerations before
attempting this process:
• Only the domain account information and password will be saved; extra Active Directory (AD)
information will be lost.
• When you demote your Win2K DCs, you’ll lose your load-balancing and fault-tolerance
configurations.
• All child domains must be in mixed mode so that you can demote them to NT 4.0 domains.
• You can’t change a domain’s NetBIOS name.

You must demote the child domains first, starting with the lowest domains in the hierarchy (e.g.,
you need to apply changes to grand.child.domain.com before applying changes to
child.domain.com). To demote the domains to NT 4.0, perform the following steps on each domain:
1. Perform a full backup of the domain.
2. Verify that the NT 4.0 BDC is up-to-date by typing
net accounts /sync

3. Review the system log to ensure the BDC update was successful.
4. Use Dcpromo to demote each Win2K DC in the domain until only one Win2K DC is left
running.
5. Detach the last Win2K DC from the network (after you disconnect this system, you can
run Dcpromo; however, you might need to plug the machine into another hub or switch for
Dcpromo to function).
6. Use the Server Manager application to promote the NT 4.0 BDC to PDC. Although the
application will say it can’t find the PDC, click Yes to continue.
After you demote domains (child and parent) to NT 4.0, you can begin to upgrade the systems to
Win2K, starting with the highest machine in the hierarchy and working down (e.g., you need to
apply changes to domain.com first, apply changes to child.domain.com second, and finally apply
changes to grand.child.domain.com). To rename the DNS server, upgrade the NT 4.0 PDC first,

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

68 DNS and Windows 2000

giving it the new DNS name. Then, run Dcpromo again on all other Win2K servers that were pre-
viously DCs and associate them with the new DNS domain.
This process is highly complex and time consuming, and Microsoft doesn’t recommend that
you attempt this procedure. If you’re considering renaming your DNS server, keep in mind that
Windows .NET Server (Win.NET Server) lets you use the random.exe utility to rename the DNS
server. So, you might want to consider upgrading to Win.NET Server, which also lets you rename
the NetBIOS domain name.
—by John Savill

Q. How do I stop my Windows domain controllers (DCs) from dynamically

registering DNS names?

A. By default, the Netlogon service on a DC registers dynamic DNS (DDNS) records to advertise
Active Directory (AD) Directory Service (DS) services. However, you can edit the registry to disable
this feature.
1. Start regedit.exe.
2. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\
Parameters registry subkey.
3. If the UseDynamicDns value exists, double-click it, and set it to 0.
4. If the UseDynamicDns value doesn’t exist, from the Edit menu, select New, DWORD
Value.
5. Enter a name of UseDynamicDns and press Enter.
6. Double-click the new value, and set it to 0.
7. Click OK.
8. Close regedit.
9. Reboot the server.
If you disable DDNS updates, you should manually create the necessary records based on the
\%windir%\system32\config\netlogon.dns file.
—by John Savill

Q. How do I stop DNS cache pollution?

A. DNS cache pollution can occur after DNS spoofing. Spoofing is the sending of nonsecure data
in response to a DNS query. Spoofing can be used to redirect queries to a rogue DNS server and
can be malicious in nature. You can configure Windows NT DNS to filter out responses to unse-
cured records.
1. Start regedit.exe.
2. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters
registry subkey.
3. From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
4. Enter a name of SecureResponses and press Enter.
5. Double-click the new value and set to 1. Click OK.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 10 DNS FAQs 69

For more information about the SecureResponses value, see the Microsoft article “Microsoft DNS
Server Registry Parameters, Part 2 of 3” at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=198409.
—by John Savill

Q. How do I clone Windows DNS zone files?

My company has several subsidiary companies, all of which have unique company and
DNS domain names. These companies all use the same server for their Internet-accessible
services (e.g., Web servers, FTP servers, DNS servers). Therefore, I often need to create
new DNS zone files that are essentially identical to those that already exist, with the
exception of the domain name portion (e.g., mycompany.com). Using Windows NT’s DNS
Manager utility to recreate these files from scratch is tiresome. Do you know of any
tricks I can use to speed up this process?

A. To easily duplicate DNS zone files and substitute the correct domain name for the new zone file,
you can trick NT’s DNS Manager. To duplicate an existing zone file and its record contents to a new
zone, run DNS Manager and begin creating the new domain and zone file (i.e., select the server name
and choose New Zone from the DNS menu). This process launches the Create New Zone wizard. In
the first dialog box, the wizard asks you to choose whether this zone is primary or secondary. Click
Primary, then Next. The second dialog box, which Figure 1 shows, asks you to name the domain and
provide the name of the DNS zone file that contains the records. To trick DNS Manager, type the new
domain in the first text box but override the default zone name in the second text box (e.g., newdo-
main.com.dns) with the name of the existing zone file for the domain you want to duplicate (e.g.,
existingdomain.com.dns).
Figure 1:
Tricking DNS Manager

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

70 DNS and Windows 2000

After you select Finish to complete the wizard, DNS Manager will have created a new zone
file for the new domain name. However, DNS Manager also will have automatically copied all
records from the existing zone file and renamed all records that reference the root domain name
(e.g., SOA, A, MX) so that they now reference the new domain name. Although you still need to
check the data values in the right column to ensure that they’re accurate for each record in the
new domain, this handy tip lets you easily copy zone data from one domain to another through
the DNS Manager GUI.
—by Sean Daily

Q. What is the proper use of CNAME records?

My company locally hosts its own DNS, but our ISP recently discovered problems in the
configuration of the DNS zone file that supports our domain name. The ISP said we
shouldn’t use Canonical Names (CNAMEs) for our two DNS servers. In our current setup,
we use CNAMEs for two DNS servers—ns1 and ns2. I don’t think we’ve had any name-
resolution problems, so the ISP’s statement confuses me. Can you shed light on this
situation?

A. A Name Server (NS) record in a DNS zone file typically shouldn’t point to a CNAME—just as a
mail exchanger (MX) record shouldn’t point to a CNAME. Although using a CNAME entry for an
NS record is possible, it’s not the best choice. The primary reason you should avoid using CNAME
records in the MX, NS, and Source of Authority (SOA) records is performance: Internet hosts make
frequent queries to these records, so you want them to require as little time and as few resources
as possible to complete. If you reference a CNAME, you generate additional queries that can
impede performance. Instead, consider another strategy.
First, for each DNS server, you can create two address (A) records that point to the same IP
address on the server. One A record is the name you used in the SOA and NS records (e.g.,
ns1.ntsol.com), and the other is the real or descriptive name of the server (e.g., calvin.win2kinfo
.com). These different A records associate the IP address with each name you want the host to
use. This process is only necessary if you want to give the DNS server more than one name—for
example, one name for the name server entries in the NS or SOA records in the zone file (e.g.,
ns1) and another name (e.g., Calvin) for your LAN clients.
Second, you can simply use one name for each server in the zone file, including references in
the A, NS, and SOA records. This solution requires no additional lookups to resolve CNAME
records to their backing A records. You could still use CNAME records to create additional aliases
for these hosts, as long as you remember to reference only the A record name in the MX, NS, and
SOA records. Figure 2 shows an example of this method.
—by Sean Daily

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 10 DNS FAQs 71

Figure 2:
Using only one name for each server in the zone file

Q. Why does an Active Directory (AD)-integrated DNS server take longer to start
than a typical zone-based DNS server?

A. Windows 2000 and later OSs can store DNS information in AD if the DNS server is a domain
controller (DC). Alternatively, the OS can store DNS information on a standard primary zone-based
DNS server, which is file based.
When the DNS service starts, it loads all zone information into a memory cache, regardless of
whether the OS maintains the DNS information in AD or in a file. DNS information stored in a
standard primary zone (i.e., read from a zone file) will load faster than information stored in an
AD-integrated zone because the integrated zone must read all its records from AD. This difference
in performance is simply an effect of reading information from different media (file versus AD).
—by John Savill

Q. In a multiple DNS server environment, how do I configure the DNS servers to

resolve both local and remote hosts?

A. Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 9x let you identify multiple DNS servers. So, for
example, you might have a local DNS server on your network and a remote DNS server if you
connect to the Internet. In this situation, if you list your local DNS server first, you might not be
able to resolve remote names, and if you list the remote DNS server first, you might not be able to
resolve local names.
In a multiple DNS server environment, if a client queries the first DNS server and that server
doesn’t respond, the client will query the second DNS server. If the first DNS server (e.g., a local
DNS server that doesn’t know about a remote host) responds with an unknown host, then the

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

72 DNS and Windows 2000

client won’t query other DNS servers. Instead, the client will resort to using other methods (e.g.,
LMHOSTS, WINS) to resolve the domain name.
To work around this problem, you need to configure your machines to forward DNS informa-
tion, which typically means configuring local DNS server information on the clients and config-
uring the local DNS servers to forward unknown requests to the remote DNS servers.
—by John Savill

Q. How do I tell which boot method my DNS service uses?

A. Windows can store DNS start-up information in one of three possible locations. The OS uses
the following values to record the location in the DNS BootMethod registry subkey:
• 1—In a BIND-style file (\%SystemRoot%\System32\DNS\Boot); the system still checks the reg-
istry for missing data in the file. Windows 2000 DNS doesn’t support this option.
• 2—In the registry.
• 3—In both the registry and Active Directory (AD).

To check the BootMethod registry subkey to see which location your DNS service uses, perform
the following steps (don’t modify the value):
1. Start regedit.exe.
2. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS registry
subkey.
3. View the BootMethod value and compare it to the three options listed above.
4. Close regedit.
Note that if you upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 to Win2K, you need to check this value after the
upgrade. If you haven’t applied Service Pack 4 (SP4) to NT 4.0, the system should use an alterna-
tive key, EnableRegistryBoot, until the DNS service populates the correct key.
—by John Savill

Q. How do I create a caching-only DNS server?

A. A DNS server typically holds records about various DNS zones. These records replicate
between other DNS servers (via the Active Directory—AD—in a AD-enabled zone).
Caching-only DNS servers don’t host any zones and aren’t authoritative for any domains.
These DNS servers simply cache results from client queries. If a client asks a caching-only DNS
server to resolve www.savilltech.com, the caching-only server will query a zone-holding DNS
server to resolve the domain name and the caching-only server will cache the answer. If another
client then asks the caching-only server to resolve the same record, the caching server can answer
from its cache. This process is similar to when a proxy server caches popular Web pages.
Caching servers are useful for sites connected through a WAN with a local caching-only DNS
server. Name-resolutions requests can occur locally and therefore save on network traffic.

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks

 Chapter 10 DNS FAQs 73

To configure a caching-only DNS server, perform the following:

1. Ensure the machine has a static IP address.
2. Install the DNS service as normal. Start the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs applet,
and select Add/Remove Windows Components, Networking Services, Details, Domain Name
System (DNS), OK, Next, Finish.
3. Start the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) DNS snap-in.
4. From the Action menu, select Connect to DNS Server.
5. In the Select Target Computer window, select the The following computer: option and enter
the name of a DNS server you want to cache.
6. Click OK.
The machine will now start to gather a cache of host-IP mappings. To clear the cache, right-click
the server name (not the server the DNS service is caching from) and select Clear Cache from the
context menu.
—by John Savill

Brought to you by LearnKey and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks