DNS (really) solved: next steps toward the new LAN

Posted on October 8, 2006
Filed Under All, Technology, Gulker labs |

If you’ve been following my struggles with updating our our LAN, you’ll know that DNS has been an issue. Earlier we had found a nifty product called DNS Enabler to turn on and configure the BIND servers lurking under Mac OS X’s hood, but there were some problems leading to slow browser page loads. I’m pleased to report that with this tip (and a little work to uncover Comcast’s DNS servers) all now appears to be well.

All the machines on the LAN point to our LAN’s twin DNS servers (2 Mac Minis) which resolve local lookups, and forward request to Comcast for addresses not on the private network or in the servers’ caches. Forwarding is now working correctly, and the presence of lightly-loaded DNS on the gigabit LAN makes for very snappy response for local or cached addresses.

So, now we can begin streamlining the LAN, and moving services onto more compact (and powerful) hardware (e.g. the Core Duo Mini). Our much-liked (and very reliable) G4 Cube and our very nice 64-bit AMD-based Linux machine may be retired and/or reassigned. A couple of new experiments that were in back-of-napkin or prototype stage can now proceed. This should be fun…

Comments

2 Responses to “DNS (really) solved: next steps toward the new LAN”

  1. pauldwaite on October 9th, 2006 1:04 am

    Woo hoo! Network stuff always seems utterly impenetrable to me. So nice to hear it is possible to figure out stuff like DNS.

  2. cg on October 9th, 2006 11:22 am

    I hear you. DNS can just be a bear… I understand the principal, but there are a ton of gotchas… and without DNS, nearly everything else grinds to a halt somewhere…

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