Re: DNS Best Practices Question

Hi Richard,

> When a DNS request comes in we have it forward from internal interface to
> external interface. The external DNS servers then sends the request to one
> of three main DNS servers at our ISP
>
> Well, yesterday all three of the DNS servers at our ISP had major issues
> and it caused DNS related issues within the company. As a result several
> discussions were held as to the industries Best Practice on this.

I am not necessarily representative of "the industries," but if I
understand your question correctly (You want to make sure your LAN can
always resolve names) then you should consider running a caching name
server inside you LAN, using something like djbdns:

http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/run-cache-x.html

It's small, fast, secure and easy to setup.  You could have as many of
these as you want although on our small network (50 workstations, 8
servers, 1 Internet connection) it has been sufficient to have only one. 
You could setup DHCP to make this the primary name server and then use
your ISP as secondaries, although your internal server should always work
unless your network is having connectivity issues or the root name servers
are experiencing difficulties, in which case we all have to sit back and
relax for a while.

Regards,

Tom Duffey
Homeboyz Interactive