domain name to ip address

juschillinnow

I know this isn't a php question,...but hey, this is my favorite forum 🙂

My problem.

I have an Apache Server installed on a Windows XP Computer. YIKES! I know!

Anyways. I have a registered domain name of (example only) www.mysite.com. if you go to the whois web site it will say that that it is registered to nameservers ns1.mysite.com and ns2.mysite.com (I did this). Those name servers are both registered to ip address (example only) 12.34.6.789. (But it is the correct address that shows up.

Question:

How do I get the domain name and DNS to look at my computer to pull up the web site? Is this a DNS problem. If so, can anyone walk me through how to be able to type in the domain name in the address bar and up pops my web site?

Thank you a million times for your help.

juschillinnow

Ok, so I found a link on how all this works and you have to have DNS and then point your nameservers to this dns server.....is that correct?

If that is true, how do I setup a DNS server on my computer..or is this impossible? I basically want to be free of any outside charges apart from the domain name and just worry about my computer being up all the time

largo

juschillinnow,

I am getting a strong feeling of deja vu here...

So your domain name, mysite.com, is pointing to 2 name servers: ns1.mysite.com and ns2.mysite.com

These name servers are assigned valid IP addresses(?).

What you've done here is, you've made ns1.mysite.com and ns2.mysite.com responsible for pointing your domain mysite.com to the correct IP address which will serve mail / www, etc. The ips for mail / www do not need to be the same, they'll be looked up in the zone file which other servers will hope to pick up by asking ns1.mysite.com & ns2.mysite.com

I am not going to go into DNS servers here because I don't think you're looking to run them yourself. Are you? If so, have a look at a DNS-Howto for your OS in question. If you run into problems setting it up on unix environments, I'd be happy to help.

If you're not looking to run your own DNS servers, then your registrar (depending on whoever it is), may provide the service of simply redirecting the domain to an IP of your choice. You simply need to point the domain to their DNS servers. Depends on options they make available.

Hope this helps a little bit!

-m.

juschillinnow

for your first point....

I'm not sure what I did 🙂

I just typed in ns1.mysite.com and ns2.mysite.com and registered them to MY ip address.

can you make up nameserver? That's what I did.

Forgive me if I sound stupid.

Yes, the registrar does offer DNS, but....., I don't know...., Maybe for educational purposes I wanted to resolve the hostname myself.

What exactly are nameservers for and how do they play into the hostname being pointed to my ip address

slava_php

dns (domain name servers) functions as such:
when you request domain www.phpbuilder.com, your browser contacts closest dns to find out which ip address is associated with the name. once the dns returns the ip address, your browser (through other network layers) contacts phpbuilder.com, by using ip address (not domain name). if your closest dns doesn't know the association, it then contacts next in chain of command dns, eventually someone/somewhere knows proper association and returns ip address for you to use.

all networked computers are addressed by thier ip address. domain names were created so that humans don't have to memorize numbers such as as 64.73.255.142

juschillinnow

right, I got that from research...So where do nameservers come in?

Or maybe my question needs to be.... Am I suppose to register my ip address with my hostname with a dns server.

Or can I do this on my own computer somehow? XP

xwin

First, let me tell you, setting up your own Name Servers is HARD. I don't think this is what you want. There are free services that will give you name servers, like www.no-ip.com which you can use. Just find out from no-ip what the servers are that you can use, change them in your web config on your registrars page, and wait for propogation.

If you are thinking of setting up name servers, they both need different IP addresses, and IMO at least, it's really not worth bothering with, when a free service will do it for you.

HTH

largo

Basically a name server is simply a service run on a server, much like httpd or mail. The task here is to convert a domain name into an IP address.

A very popular name server software is "Bind":

http://www.isc.org/products/BIND.

From what I remember (and this was some time back), you have to tell your registrar that the domain you have just registered will act as a name server.

Name servers communicate with each other to take requests and carry it forward till they find the name server responsible for the domain-name in question. Most keep the information received cached for 24 hours. (also known as DNS / ISP cache).

If this is for personal use and you want to learn how everything works, I heartly recommend O'Reilly's "DNS & Bind". It's a fantastic book which covers everything quite well.

If you want to avoid the self-DNS setup, you will need to go through your registrar or someone who provides DNS service. (I think there are some free one's around -- all they ask for in return is the ability to spit spam at you).

Hope this helps!

yelvington

OK, let's start over.

DNS maps domain names to IP numbers.

When you type "www.sitename.com" into a browser, your operating system sends a request to the DNS server that it is configured to use. This configuration can be done manually (when you set the IP address of your machine), or automatically (through DHCP, if your address comes from that.)

If you query a DNS server and that server knows the answer, it provides it.

If it does not know, that server goes to the root for the root domain -- .com in this case -- and asks for the identity of the authoritative DNS server for the domain you're seeking. Note that it does NOT ask for the IP address of www.sitename.com. It asks: "Who can answer this question correctly?"

In this case, the .com root server would direct queries to ns1.yoursite.com, because that's what is in your official registration data.

So the DNS server that you queried then asks ns1.sitename.com for the information.

If ns1.sitename.com isn't running a DNS server, the process immediately breaks down and nothing further happens.

If it is running such a server, that server provides the answer, which typically will be cached by the intermediate DNS server to accelerate performance the next time around.

When you register a domain name you have to point it at a real, working, DNS host that will store your domain's name-to-address mapping records. If you don't, your domain is nonfunctional.

You may be able to run a DNS server under Windows XP. I have no idea how to do it.

DNS servers are standard with all Unix-based systems, including Linux.

Most people would use an external service that specializes in providing DNS. MyDNS.com and EasyDNS.com are two that come to mind; both have nice Web-based interfaces for updating your DNS records.

juschillinnow

OK.....this is making much more sense, but I'm still confused on a couple of things.

Is the name server...... ns1.mysite.com ..... and domain name in itself? if so, who resolves this?

I registered ns1.mysite.com to my real ip address. Does this mean that the DNS server looks to my computer for the answer in resolving the hostname www.mysite.com ?

If so, then I have done everything except setup DNS on my computer....correct?

BY the way.... I Really appreciate the help. I have learned more right now the in the last week of searching the web.

Will SAM or HOST files provide this information as the DNS server?

yelvington

The authoritative domain servers for any domain are called hosts, and they are given IP addresses as well as names in the root records.

You're probably struggling to understand why the root servers don't just store all the whole domain's information and be done with it.

Bad idea. Doesn't scale.

Authoritative servers are supposed to be few in number, and change very rarely. They hold records that can be many in number and change at any time.

For example, my domain records change only when I move or change DNS providers -- it could be years between changes.

They currently point to dedicated domain hosts (ns1.easydns.com, ns2.easydns.com) that provide name service for literally thousands of domains.

My actual DNS records can be updated at any time. I have 11 hosts in one of my domains. A business might have hundreds or even thousands of unique hostnames within a given domain. That sort of clutter doesn't belong in the root servers; it belongs in the distributed authoritative servers.