DNS Overview

DNS, as with most networking protocols, has two parts: a service providing answers and a client that queries the service. In the Oracle Solaris operating system, the default DNS service is provided by BIND, from the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), and its associated daemon named. The DNS client consists of a collection of utilities and libraries.

Multicast DNS

Multicast DNS (mDNS) provides a naming service system that is easy to set up and maintain for systems on a local link. All participating network devices on the same local link perform standard DNS functions, using mDNS rather than unicast, and do not need a unicast DNS server. For administrators, the primary advantage of mDNS is that no unicast DNS server needs to be maintained on the local network. There is no need, for example, to update and maintain host names in files to resolve hostname to IP address requests for systems on the local link that are using mDNS.

Multicast DNS Service Discovery

Network services include printing, file transfer, music sharing, servers for photo, document, and other file sharing, and services provided by other local devices. DNS service discovery support in Oracle Solaris includes an open source framework and tools from Apple Inc. to enable applications to advertise and discover network services using DNS in this Oracle Solaris release.

For users, network service discovery makes computing easier by enabling them to browse for services on the network, rather than needing to find the service manually. Existing standards and work preformed by other companies and groups ensure that cross-platform support is available.

Related Materials About DNS

For information about DNS and BIND administration, see the following documentation:

• BIND 9 Administrator's Manual on the ISC web site at http://www.isc.org

• BIND 9 Migration Notes documentation in the /usr/share/doc/bind/migration.txt file

• Listings of BIND features, known bugs and defects, and links to additional material on the ISC web site at http://www.isc.org

• DNS and Bind (5th Edition), by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, (O'Reilly, 2006)