Introduction

In this chapter, you'll learn how to plan for the best way of resolving host and NetBIOS names on your network. We'll discuss issues involved in designing a DNS namespace, such as choosing the parent domain name, the conventions and limitations that govern host names, the relationship of DNS and Active Directory (AD), and how to support multiple namespaces.

Then we move onto planning DNS server deployment. You'll find out how to consider factors such as the number of servers, server roles, server capacity, and server placement. We'll also show you how to plan for zone replication between your DNS servers, and we'll address planning for forwarding and how DNS interacts with the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) on a Windows Server 2003 network. We'll discuss Windows Server 2003 DNS server interoperability with Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) and other non-Windows DNS implementations. You'll learn about zone transfers between Windows Server 2003 DNS servers and BIND servers, and we'll discuss supporting AD with BIND. You'll learn about split DNS configurations and how interoperability relates to other services such as Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) and DHCP. Next, we'll address DNS security issues, including common DNS threats such as footprinting, redirection, and DNS denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. You'll learn how to best secure your DNS deployment by using a split namespace and packet filtering. We'll discuss how to determine the best DNS security level for your network. Next, we'll look at DNS performance issues. We'll show you how to monitor DNS...