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What is DNS Servers & How to Setup them

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Tech Bunny
What is DNS Servers & How to Setup them

DNS server is short for Domain Name System, this name just explains it all. The job of DNS servers is to turn domain names, like yourcomputer.com into an IP address so computers can actually understand each other. For example, when you type www.google.com in your browser's url bar, a DNS server will be required to look up and resolve the domain name google.com into its corresponding IP address (173.194.36.157) .

With millions of different websites on the Internet today, it would be nearly impossible for any individual or computer to store every website and their corresponding IP addresses locally; therefore, we need a service that acts as a global directory list of every single website in the world along with their corresponding IP address. This is what DNS servers do!

What are the different types of DNS servers?

There are many different types of DNS servers out there in this big world today, but for this article we will be specifically talking about two main types of DNS servers: recursive and authoritative. Let's talk about a couple important parts of these server types first: addresses, queries, answers, time-to-live (TTL), weighting and priority.

An address in this case is just a reference to another system or network. Queries are the request for information that you make to other computer systems; so when you go onto your favorite search engine like Google or Yahoo!, you make a query asking them to look up some information for you. The answer is what they find as a result of your query. Each answer has a TTL that tells you how long the server can store this information before expiring and having to be renewed again by another query; weighting is just an algorithmic process in which DNS servers can rank their responses with, taking into account various factors such as the number of times they have answered before a certain query; priority is a numeric value assigned to each DNS server which determines how it will respond to queries compared to all other servers out there (or even within its own particular domain).

Now let's look at recursive and authoritative types of DNS servers. The main difference between recursive and authoritative servers is that recursive servers are not technically supposed provide the final "answer" but instead should reference other sources for the correct answer (the "authoritative source"). Recursive servers can also be considered as a type of caching server, because they typically will store the answer locally for some time. Authoritative types of DNS servers are always the final and official sources for answers to a specific query. So recursive servers do not provide you with an authoritative answer (because we don't consider them an authoritative source), but instead recursively look up your destination IP address by querying other DNS servers until it returns with the correct information.

How to Setup a DNS server?

Setting up a DNS server is very easy. It's as easy as setting up any other server, you just have to know what kind of information the recursor (your ISP) needs from you in order to set up your zone file for you automatically, or some other kind of interface that makes everything much easier.

To setup a DNS server all you need is:

- A linux or windows machine with an ip address. (I suggest debian for linux and server 2012r2 for windows)

- Your ISP to assign you a network interface which has a static IP on your network.

- Access to the router that assigns your dns servers via DHCP, or if it's not possible make sure that your router knows never to give out this information when it recieves it. You will have to configure this statically via its web gui if necessary.

- Sufficient knowledge to be able to install tools and configure your router.

Here are the list of best dns servers:

1) 4.2.2.2

2) 8.8.8.8

3) 8.26.56.26

4) 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns...

5) 2600:100c:b023::58 ; 2600:100c:b029::57 ; 2600:100c:b02B::53; 2600:100c:b02D::53

6) Google Public DNS 8.8.8.8/8 + the IPs of your ISP's DNS servers like 199.101.242.72 and 199,101,24 2 .74 (replace the periods withons).

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