I Bought the Software, Now What?

Q: What do I need to install where?
A: Install QuickDNS Remote on each DNS server. Install QuickDNS manager on wherever you want to manage from.

Q: What do I do when connecting for the first time?
A: Connect to the DNS server by name if you can. If you haven’t assigned names for your DNS servers yet, connect by IP address, assign names, disconnect, and then reconnect by name.

Assigning names involve creating a zone that will contain your NS records and A records.

See this example

Q: How do I configure client machines?
A: On a Mac, go into your TCP/IP panel and put in the IP addresses of your name servers.
On a windows machine ***???****

Open the properties for network Neighborhood Yadda Yadda. *********

If you have a DHCP or PPP server, configure it to give out the addresses of your name servers to your dialup or dynamic IP clients.

Q: How do I register my DNS servers?
A: Figure out who’s responsible for your parent domain, then talk to them. In the case of registering a com, net, or org domain that would be one of the many commercial registrars.

Q: How do I make zones?
A: To create a new zone file you must first connect to one or more DNS servers. You may then either click on the New Zone button in the Manager window in QuickDNS Manager or select New Zone from the File menu.

Once you have brought up a Create Zone window, type in the fully qualified domain name of the zone you wish to create. Select the master server for the zone from the Master Server menu. All other servers that you are connected to will be listed as available slave servers. All available servers will be selected as slaves by default. You can deselect a server by clicking on the checkbox. If you need help you can click on the Assistant button in the lower left-hand corner. Once you’ve made your selections press the Create button to create the zone. You can then start to edit the records of the zone file you have created.

Q: I have a NAT server. With all my services behind my NAT server, I can't contact my own servers from inside my network. What are the available solutions?
A. There are three different solutions; implement one of the following:

1. Move your servers outside your NAT server. Some firewalls that provide NAT service offer a DMZ port, where servers that need public IP addresses can still be protected by the firewall.

2. Use a NAT server that implements a workaround for this problem. For example:

2a. At least some Cisco NAT servers have a DNS translation feature. This way, all your DNS data uses internal addresses; when a query comes in from the outside, the response is translated by the NAT server to use the appropriate public IP addresses. The drawback is, you can't then have a slave server for your DNS data that's outside the NAT server, since the translation isn't applied to zone transfers.

2b. Some NAT servers, notably Sustainable Softwork’s IPNetRouter, offer local NAT, also called two-way NAT. This way, an internal client can contact an internal server using the public IP address of that server.

3. Maintain two separate sets of DNS data, one for the public and another for internal use. This second set uses internal addresses for your internal servers.