ECE 650

Systems Programming & Engineering

Spring 2018

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and

Domain Name System (DNS)

Tyler Bletsch
Duke University

Slides are adapted from Brian Rogers (Duke)

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP)
(It’s just one slide)

2
 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
• DHCP: Allow hosts to enter a network and ask “what IP should I use
for myself?”
• How it works:
1. Client sends an IP broadcast “DISCOVERY” request
(destination 255.255.255.255 UDP port 67)
2. DHCP server on network sends an “OFFER” with
IP address and other config (gateway router,
DNS servers, maybe other stuff)
• Note: multiple offers might be provided by multiple
DHCP servers (but usually it’s just one)
3. Client sends a broadcast REQUEST for one of the offers
4. DHCP server sends ACKNOWLEDGE back
5. Client now has an IP address and basic config info
• DHCP can also be used to start network-boot (PXE), commonly used
for diskless clusters, OS auto-install, etc.
3
Domain Name System (DNS)

(Many slides)

4
 Purpose of DNS
• Map an easy-to-remember name to an IP address
• IP Address
 IPv4: four numbers separated by decimals, e.g. 120.74.53.1
• Each number called an 'octet' with a value of 0-255
• Some are reserved as special, e.g. 127.0.0.1 = localhost
 IPv6: eight hex numbers separated by colons
• Implications
 Without DNS, to send IP packet, must remember IP addresses manually!
...and they could change!
 With DNS, we can use the name directly:
• www.google.com or www.cnn.com
• DNS also provides inverse look-up that maps IP address to name

5
 Design Goals of DNS
• Primary goal is a consistent namespace used to refer to resources
 Consistent: same names should refer to same resources
 Resources: IP addresses, mail servers
• Enable distributed management
 Size of the name database will be large
 Updates (changes, additions, removals) will be frequent
• Design goals determine its structure
 Hierarchical name space
 Distributed directory service

6
 Before there was DNS...
• There was the HOSTS.TXT file (or what about /etc/hosts now)
• Maintained at SRI Network Information Center (NIC)
• Before DNS (1985), the name-to-IP address was done by
downloading this single file from a central server with FTP
 No hierarchical structure to the file
 Still works on most OSes; can be used to define local names

7
 DNS Architecture Components
• Domain namespace and resource records
• Name servers
• Name resolution

8
 Domain Namespace

.(root)
Top-level domains
org edu com gov

duke mit
ece cs
www smtp

• Domain namespace is a hierarchical and logical tree structure

• Label from a node to root in the DNS tree represents a DNS name
• Each subtree below a node is a DNS domain
 DNS domain can contain hosts or other domains (subdomains)
• Examples of DNS domains: .edu, duke.edu, ece.duke.edu

9
 Domain Namespace

.(root)
Top-level domains
org edu com gov

duke mit
ece cs
www smtp

• Red is managed by Duke

• Green is managed by ECE
• Below top-level domain, administration of name space is delegated
to organizations
 Each organization can further delegate

10
 Domain Names
• Names of hosts can be assigned independent of host locations on a
link layer network or IP network
 This means the host name can remain the same
 Even if IP address of the host changes (e.g. DHCP)

11
 Fully Qualified Domain Names

.(root)
Top-level domains
org edu com gov

duke mit
ece cs
www smtp

• Every node in the DNS domain tree can be identified by a FQDN

 Fully Qualified Domain Name
• FDQN (from right to left) consists of labels (“ece”, “duke”, “edu”) separated by a
period from the root to the node
• Each label can be up to 63 characters; full DNS name <= 255 chars
• FDQN contains characters, digits, dashes; not case-sensitive

12
 Top-Level Domains
• Three types of top-level domains:
 Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD)
• 3 char code indicates the function of the organization
• Use primarily within the US (e.g. gov, mil, edu, org, com, net)
 Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD)
• 2 char country or region code (e.g. us, jp, uk)
 Reverse Domain
• Special domain used for IP address-to-name mapping
• in-addr.arpa
• More than 200 top-level domains

13
 DNS Architecture
• Domain name space and resource records (RRs)
 Domain namespace is a hierarchical tree structure
 A domain can be delegated to an organization
 We'll discuss resource records shortly
• Name servers
 Domain name hierarchy exists only in the abstract
 A host's name servers are specified in /etc/resolv.conf
• Name resolution

14
 Hierarchy of Name Servers
• Resolution of the hierarchical root server
namespace is done by
hierarchy of name servers
• Namespace is partitioned into
zones. A zone is a contiguous
portion of the DNS namespace
com server
• Each server is responsible org server edu server gov server

(authoritative for a zone)

• DNS server answers queries
.virginia.edu
about host names in its zone uci.edu server
server

cs.virginia.edu
server

15
 DNS Domains and Zones
• Each zone is anchored at a specific domain node
• A DNS domain is a subtree of the namespace
• A zone is a portion of the DNS namespace
 Generally stored in a file
 Could consist of multiple nodes
• A server can divide part of its zone and delegate it to other servers
• A name server implements the zone information as a collection of
resource records (RRs)

16
 Name Servers
• Each zone has a primary and secondary name server
 For reliability
 Primary server maintains a zone file with zone info
• Updates made to the primary server
 Secondary server copies data stored at the primary server
• Adding a new host:
 When new host is added (e.g. “newmachine.ece.duke.edu”)
 Administrator adds the IP info on the host (IP address, name) to a
configuration file on the primary server

17
 Root Name Servers

• Root name servers know how to find authoritative name servers for
all top-level zones
• There are 13 (virtual) root name servers
• Root servers are critical for proper functioning of name resolution
18
 Resource Records
• A zone file includes a collection of Resource Records (RRs)
• (Name, Value, Type, Class, TTL)
 Name and Value
 Type specifies how the “Value” should be interpreted
• e.g. “NS” means name is a domain and value is name of authoritative
name server for this domain
• e.g. “A” means a machine name and IP address
 Class: allows other entities to define record types (“IN” for Internet is most
widely used currently)
 TTL: how long should the RR be cached (more on this later)

19
 Resource Records

$TTL 86400 • Max age of cached data in

seconds

mylab.com. IN SOA PC4.mylab.com. [email protected]. (

1 ; serial
28800 ; refresh • Start of authority (SOA)
7200 ; retry record.
604800 ; expire Means: “This name server is
86400 ; minimum ttl authoritative for the zone
) Mylab.com”
; • PC4.mylab.com is the
name server
• [email protected] is the
mylab.com. IN NS PC4.mylab.com. email address of the person
; in charge

• Name server (NS) record:

localhost A 127.0.0.1 one entry for each authoritative
PC4.mylab.com. A 10.0.1.41 name server
PC3.mylab.com. A 10.0.1.31 • Address (A) records:
PC2.mylab.com. A 10.0.1.21 one entry for each host address
PC1.mylab.com. A 10.0.1.11 20
 Domain Name Resolution
1. User program issues a request for
the IP address of a hostname
gethostbyname()

2. Local resolver formulates a DNS Hostname (neon.tcpip-lab.edu)

query to the name server of the host HTTP IP address (128.143.71.21) Resolver

3. Name server checks if it is

IP address (128.143.71.21)
authorized to answer the query.

(neon.tcpip-lab.edu)
Hostname
 If yes, it responds.
 Otherwise, it will query other name
servers, starting at the root tree

4. When the name server has the Name

answer it sends it to the resolver. server

21
 Inverse Query

.(root)

org edu com gov arpa

duke mit
in-addr
ece cs
www smtp
150.45.38.128

• What is the host name for IP address 150.45.38.128?

 IP address is converted to domain name:
150.45.38.128.in-addr.arpa
 Resolver sends query for this address

22
 Caching
• To reduce DNS traffic, name servers cache info
 e.g. Domain name / IP address mappings
• When entry for a query is cached, the server does not contact other
servers
• Note: if an entry is sent from a cache, the reply from the server is
marked as “unauthoritative”
• Caching-only servers
 Only purpose is to cache results
 Do not contain zone info or a zone database file

23
 Negative Caching
• Two kinds of negative responses
 Name in question does not exist
 Name in record exists, but requested data does not
• Negative responses will be cached too

24
 Modern follow-ons
• DNS with DHCP integration
 When a new host uses DHCP to get on the network, the DHCP server can tell
the DNS server about it, then the DNS server can answer requests for that
host by name
• Multicast DNS (mDNS) and Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution
(LLMNR)
 Resolve hostnames when there’s no local DNS server
 Allows “automagic” host discovery on individual networks
 Zero configuration – they’re self-organizing protocols

25