Domain Name System

Domain Name System (DNS) is sometimes referred to as the BIND service in BSD UNIX. The Domain Name System presents friendly names to users and resolves friendly computer names to IP addresses.

Workstations on the internetwork are typically configured to use one or two DNS servers directly. If a DNS server is unable to identify the IP address of a name requested by the workstation, it sends back information about other DNS servers that might be able to resolve the address. The workstation then queries the new set of DNS servers.

DNS makes it easy for users to access information from servers on the Internet. For example, it is easier to remember ftp.microsoft.com than to remember the IP address for that server.

To use the Domain Name System, workstations must be configured to know at least one DNS server's IP address. DNS server addresses are typically assigned to LAN workstations in one of two ways:

In the specific case of Remote Access, DNS server addresses are assigned to remote workstations in one of three ways:

For Windows NT or Windows95 workstations dialing into a Windows NT server, the remote access server always assigns the DNS address. The address is either statically assigned on the remote access server or dynamically assigned to the remote access server via DHCP. For non-Microsoft remote access solutions, remote users might need to statically assign their DNS server.