[MLB-WIRELESS] DNS for melbwireless network?

[Dan Flett]

Hi John,

Yeah, DNS is something that gets discussed occasionally on this list.  A few
ideas are tossed around and then nothing much seems to come of it.

Aside from making addresses easier to remember, DNS is also useful for
"remapping" names to IP addresses when the IP address changes.  For
instance, Node GUR was set up in Moorabbin originally, then Melb_AP (of Node
GUR) moved house to Rowville and he had to change Node GURs' IP address.  If
we had a network-wide DNS system, people would not have had to change their
pointers to Node GUR.

So basically DNS is essential if we want to allow any sort of mobility of
nodes on the network - not necessarily fast-moving roaming nodes, but fixed
nodes that occasionally move house to a different suburb.  Dynamic DNS would
be very handy for roaming nodes though.

Graybeard (Node GES) and me (Node GMR) run DNS servers - we are currently
using the nodexxx.mwn convention.  Other people are/were using different
conventions.  We are using DJBDNS and are currently stalled at the point of
delegating authority for our respective node-level domains to each other -
we can't get DJBDNS to do it.

There is more discussion of DNS here:
http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/wiki/?WGRoutingAddressing

I might do some experimenting with DNSMASQ at some point.  It's a very
lightweight combined DHCP/DNS server/reflector, which can serve names from
your hosts file.  The WRT54G/GS use it for DHCP and DNS, and I use it on my
home Internet router PC.  It's a nice, convenient package that takes a lot
of the hassle out of configuring DNS and DHCP.  It can't do everything BIND
and DJBDNS can do, but for a single node it might be ok - one thing it can't
do is issue authoritative answers on queries.  Experimentation will tell us
if a node can use it for it's own sub-domain names across the MW network.

Cheers,

Dan


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au [mailto:owner-
> melbwireless at wireless.org.au] On Behalf Of John McClumpha
> Sent: Wednesday, 23 February 2005 1:36 PM
> To: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
> Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] DNS for melbwireless network?
> 
> While Im sure this may have been discussed in the past - I can't find a
> record of it anywhere.
> 
> Has anyone thought of setting up a DNS for the melb wireless network? -
> this would of course facilitate access to each node using a "name"
> rather than trying to remember ip addresses - a standard naming
> convention incorporating the node name would work quite well - e.g.
> inq.melbourne.wireless.org.au
> 
> I'd be interested to know what has been discussed on this topic
> previously and what the outcome(s) were.
> 
> john
> node INQ
> 
> To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
> with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message


To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message