Confused about DNS, Mail, & Web... 1

[Ashaman074]

Hi,

Unfortunately, my knowledge of the inner workings of the net is sorely lacking. I have been reading around on DNS & Registrars until I think I am more confused than before!

Here is my situation; I have a T1 line & block of IPs through a local company, though it seems they are re-selling it from Qwest. I have a domain name registered, but currently all Email & my website is hosted by a third party. I recently purchased a 3Com Internet server capable of hosting Email & Web. Router configuration, etc is not a problem, I have set it up and can of course access it directly by typing in the IP number.

So...now I am wondering how I can get it all working, but I am really confused about the whole DNS thing....I mean, I understand the basics that I need x.x.x.x translated to xxxx.com; and that there needs to be an "mx" record to direct Email as well. However, I am unclear as to how this is currently being done, as well as how I can get both Email & Web on my own local server.

So is there anyone who really knows that could explain to me what needs to happen here? I mean, at this point, I suppose I am basically acting as my own ISP, so do I need to set up an internal DNS server of some sort? Does the DNS server Qwest provided me with need updated information? Or would it be waiting for information that would be relayed from my OWN DNS?

Further confusing to me was that internic shows a registrar of godaddy.com for my domain; with nameservers listed at the company currently hosting my Email & Web....so would I then need to set up my own DNS, then have them pointing to my DNS rather than the current hosting-company? If so, and godaddy provides a lookup, why is there a DNS required also? It seems redundant...?

I would sure appreciate any info that could clear this up for me!

 

[ChrisAC]

You don't need to set up your own DNS. If you're only going to host your own web server and mail server then hosting your own DNS can be more trouble than it's worth.

So, who controls your domain is up to you. You can have your ISP host your DNS. You then assign an address out of your range to your mail server and your web server. You then send a request to your ISP (or whoever has your domain) to point the MX record to the IP address of your mail server and the

http://www record

to your web server.

Chris.
************************
Chris Andrew, CCNA
chris@iproute.co.uk
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[Ashaman074]

Thanks for the reply!

This is what I had hoped, I really don't want to set one up! So you think I can get in touch with someone at Qwest (who our T1 comes through) to do this?

Thanks again.

 

[ChrisAC]

It depends on who currectly holds your domain. If it's this third party company then you could get them to release the domain and have Qwest pick it up so that they could control it and do the pointing for you. Most our our customers have us hold their domains on our DNS servers. If they are coming from another ISP who holds their domain then we ask them to write to their old ISP and ask them to release the domain to us. When it's available we pick it up and put it on our DNS servers so that we can do the pointing for MX records and A records.

Good luck.

Chris.
************************
Chris Andrew, CCNA
chris@iproute.co.uk
************************