There are many types of domains available on the internet to purchase. There are also many different Domain Name System clients as well as a number of DNS servers. There are clients and servers for Microsoft windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and BIND on Linux. BIND is the most popular Unix based Domain Names System server. BIND is also available for Microsoft Windows , but is rarely used. Microsoft Windows contains two types of Domain Name System clients, an integrated client and a command line client. The integrated Domain Name System client in Windows is used for applications that do not have custom written DNS clients. Command line DNS client is named nslookup. Normally used to troubleshoot DNS issues, this can look up any type of record from any DNS server.
Because of the huge volume of requests generated by a system like DNS, the designers wished to provide a mechanism to reduce the load on individual DNS servers. The Domain Name System resolution process allows for caching (i.e. the local recording and subsequent consultation of the results of a DNS query) for a given period of time after a successful answer. How long a resolver caches a DNS response (i.e. how long a DNS response remains valid) is determined by a value called the time to live (TTL). The TTL is set by the administrator of the DNS server handing out the response. The period of validity may vary from just seconds to days or even weeks. When searching for domain names the major search engines are a great place to start. |
