A DNS zone is an area of the domain name space that is delegated to a particular person, organization, or business.
DNS zones are also used for administrative purposes, allowing for fine-grained control over DNS components, such as name servers, mail servers and so on.
When a client requests information about a specific host name (like example.com), it resolves the IP address to a domain name using a DNS lookup. The authoritative name server for the zone provides the answer.
All About DNS And DNS Zones
Every device on the internet has an IP address. This is a number that identifies each device on the internet.
A human can easily remember these addresses because they are written as words. However, computers need to use these numbers to talk to each other. So every computer needs a unique IP address.
These addresses are usually written as four or six digits separated by colons. In IPv4, the first three digits represent the network (1-128), the next two digits represent the subnet (0-255) and the last digit represents the host (0-254).
In IPv6, the first eight hexadecimal digits represent the network prefix, the next sixteen represent the subnet mask and the last two represent the host identifier.
DNS is a mapping system that translates human or readable names into IP addresses. It does this by looking up each domain name in a table. Once it finds the correct IP address, it sends it back to your computer.
DNS servers are vital components of the internet. They map IP addresses to domain names. Staying up-to-date with them is crucial.
When you type Google.com into your web browser, your computer first looks up the IP address (the numerical address) of the website you want to go to. Your computer then sends an HTTP request to the IP address.
This request contains the URL you typed into the search box. The server hosting the website receives your request, and returns the data you requested.
In order to do this, the server must know what domain name to use. A domain name is simply a short string of letters and numbers that identifies a website.
For example, if I wanted to go to www.google.com, my domain name would be google.com. Domain names are also used by computers to identify other computers on the internet.
The process of translating a domain name into an IP address is called resolving a domain name.
What Are DNS Zones?
Your DNS Server can be configured into different zones. Each zone is responsible for managing a specific set of domains.
This allows you to create separate zones for each domain name. You can also create zones for specific purposes, such as development, staging, production, etc.
A domain name system (DNS) zone is a set of records used to map host names to IP addresses. It is a hierarchical structure of zones, each containing subzones.
Each subzone contains records that define how to resolve a given hostname into an IP address.
A DNS zone file contains the following information:
– Name server IP address
– Contact email address
– Contact phone number
– Zone name
– Zone data
Types Of DNS Zones
Primary Zone
Primary DNS zones are the most reliable because they store the most important information about your domain name.
You can edit them directly by using a web browser or a command line tool. However, if the DNS server goes down, then your changes won’t be saved.
Active Directory Integrated Zone
The Active Directory-integrated zones overcome the problems of the primary zones that are heavily reliant on a single server.
The DNS zone file that contains the information about the DNS zone remains in an Active Directory database instead of being stored on a DNS server.
Dynamic DNS zones are very useful when you need to update your website or other services without having to wait for someone else to do it.
You can change your IP address whenever you want. This makes it easy to move your site to another location if needed.
You need to install DNS on a Domain Controller.
Secondary Zone
Secondary zones are copies of other zones. You can’t change them, but you can use them as backups.
Stub Zone
A stub zone is a zone file that stores information about other zones. This zone file is used by DNS servers to help them find the correct IP address for a domain name.
Stub zones contain the same information as primary zones, but they do not store the entire zone file.
Instead, they contain only enough information to locate the zone file that actually holds the complete record set.
Reverse Lookup Zone
A zone file contains a mapping of IP addresses to hostnames. This allows you to map the IP address to the name of the machine that owns the IP address.
Verifying A DNS Zone
Reverse Lookup Zones are used to prevent DNS queries from being cached by clients. This prevents users from seeing stale information when they make a request for a website.
Forward Lookup Zones are similar but instead of preventing caching, they allow it.
Zone files are used to define zones within an Active Directory environment. Dynamic updates are used to automatically update zone records when changes occur.
A zone file must be created before any changes can take place.
To verify your DNS zone is set up, open the command line and type ping followed by your zone name. You should see the IP address you entered.
With this you can allow internal users to access your zone but for external users, do port forwarding of 443 and 80 tcp.
Using The IPAM Direct Console
You can manage DNS zones using the IPAM direct console. To do this, navigate to Monitor and Manage and then select DNS and DHCP Servers, and then click DNS server.
Then, under the Server Type menu, choose DNS server. This will show all the DNS servers managed via IPAM.
A DNS zone is a collection of records that define an Internet domain. You can use them to map a website or email address to a particular IP address.
Conclusion
To conclude, DNS zones ease management and provide the necessary redundancy needed to manage your DNS servers.
There is a wide variety of DNS zones available, and the choice depends upon what you’re looking to get with a DNS zone.
Set-up is fairly easy as well, but there are some things to consider before setting up a DNS zone.
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