Where? in small home network should Caching DNS Serve be located?

[Tom Needs a Hat Mitchell]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 03:24:20PM -0600, dsavage at peaknet.net wrote:
> On Monday March 15, 2004 Johnny Smith <opensource_powered at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I'm wondering if I should set up a Caching DNS Server
> > for my home network?
> >
> > And on which machine/s? should I have one?
...
> 
> Assuming your gateway [GW] is a (non-embedded) Linux box, I think that
> would be your first choice. A caching nameservice is usually a very tiny
> service on a home network, so system load should not be much of a worry no
> matter where you host it.

Are you thinking nscd or bind?
Do you want to  expose internal names?
Do you want the name server to answer to the world?
Is there an internal .vs. external view difference?
Are MX records internal and external the same?
DHCP....?

My guess is that you want it on or very close to your web and mail
servers. You do want to ensure that lookups of localhost.localdomain
get quick responses throughout the net.

Some of the questions above will help you decide if the service 
is on the firewall or just inside and behind the firewall/gateway.

At the physical layer, for a network this small, as long as there are
routes to the nameserver box it does not matter IMO.  You might know
something about the network loads and physical plant to change my
mind.

The first setup is 98% of the work so consider two (twins).  Since
resolv.conf lets you list three, a pair is good stuff.  With FC2 in the
near future you can update one then the other when you are happy with
the first.

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	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
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