Introduction

Computers think in ones and zeros, and the computers and routers on your Windows Server 2003 network communicate with one another using numbers in the form of IP addresses and MAC addresses. People, on the other hand, prefer to think in terms of names, which they use to represent computers and resources. This means that there must be a way to resolve the names used by the people to the numbers used by the computers, and that is where name resolution comes in. Without this mechanism, users will be unable to connect to resources using the friendly names they re used to employing. Thus, it is an important part of the network administrator s job to design and implement an effective strategy for name resolution on the network.

In this chapter, you ll learn how to plan for the best way of resolving host and NetBIOS names on your network. We ll first present an overview of host naming, including how host names are resolved using the hosts file and using the Domain Name System (DNS). 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...