Book Image

Linux for Networking Professionals

By : Rob VandenBrink
1 (1)
Book Image

Linux for Networking Professionals

1 (1)
By: Rob VandenBrink

Overview of this book

As Linux continues to gain prominence, there has been a rise in network services being deployed on Linux for cost and flexibility reasons. If you are a networking professional or an infrastructure engineer involved with networks, extensive knowledge of Linux networking is a must. This book will guide you in building a strong foundation of Linux networking concepts. The book begins by covering various major distributions, how to pick the right distro, and basic Linux network configurations. You'll then move on to Linux network diagnostics, setting up a Linux firewall, and using Linux as a host for network services. You'll discover a wide range of network services, why they're important, and how to configure them in an enterprise environment. Finally, as you work with the example builds in this Linux book, you'll learn to configure various services to defend against common attacks. As you advance to the final chapters, you’ll be well on your way towards building the underpinnings for an all-Linux datacenter. By the end of this book, you'll be able to not only configure common Linux network services confidently, but also use tried-and-tested methodologies for future Linux installations.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Linux Basics
4
Section 2: Linux as a Network Node and Troubleshooting Platform
8
Section 3: Linux Network Services

Chapter 6: DNS Services on Linux

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a major underpinning of today's information-based society. A proverb used within the technical community (phrased in haiku format) is shown here:

It's not DNS

There is no way it's DNS

It was DNS

This describes more technical problems than you might think, up to widespread internet or cloud service outages. It also nicely describes the progression of how a problem is solved, with the answer: "The root problem is always DNS." This nicely illustrates just how important this service is to almost every facet of today's corporate networks and public internet.

In this chapter, we'll cover several topics that involve DNS basics, then build—and finally, troubleshoot—DNS services. We'll look at the following areas:

  • What is DNS?
  • Two main DNS server implementations
  • Common DNS implementations
  • DNS troubleshooting and reconnaissance

Then...