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External Domain and DNS Services

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

In order to receive mail from the outside world, you will need to set up an Internet domain (for example pcqlinux.com). The biggest problem you will probably face here is finding a domain name that has not yet been taken. Of course, if you already have a registered domain, that should not be an issue.

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Once you have identified an available domain name, you need to do two things:

  1. Register the domain
  2. Set up an external DNS service for that domain.

Traditionally, one would go to Network Solutions’ website and register the domain there, then negotiate with your ISP to run the DNS for your domain. If you change ISPs or Web providers, you would have to go through the whole rigmarole again.

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Thankfully, these hassles are no longer necessary in the 21st century with lots of registrars and DNS companies through whom you can do everything in one shot. Thus, even if you change ISPs, you do not have to do everything again–just modify the DNS entries to point to the new IP addresses, and you are done.

In this article, we are going to use one such service (EasyDNS) to register a domain, and set up the DNS services to cater to your domain.

EasyDNS (www.easydns.com), a Canadian DNS provider and sub-registrar for Tucows, is one such service. EasyDNS charges $19.95 per year for DNS-only services and $35 per year for Domain Registration and DNS services.

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This is a great deal, because it is both cheaper (less than half) than using Network Solutions, and provides far more functionality (Network Solutions does not give you DNS services).

We head to www.easydns.com where we select ‘Register a Domain Name (Web Address)’.

At the next page, we scroll down to the little form there, select ‘I want to register a new domain’, enter the domain name (say pcqlinux.com) and click on ‘Next’.

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Note that you can also use EasyDNS for DNS services only if you have registered your domain elsewhere–just use the transfer option.

If you do not already have an account with EasyDNS, you will now be prompted to create one. Once that is complete, you will be prompted to enter your user ID and password, after which it takes you to the ‘Add Domain’ screen.

Here you need to answer a few quick questions. If you are going to be the owner of the domain, just click the relevant option, and also enable ‘I will be the only contact person for this domain’. You also have the option of specifying other contacts, owners, etc.

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Once you Ok this section, you are taken to the service levels screen. Select ‘DNS-Only service & Registry Fees’.



Make sure you read the terms of service, then enable ‘Yes, I agree’, and click on Next.

That’s it–the domain is ready for registration. At this point, you will be prompted to pay for the services (an e-mail to that effect will also be sent to you). This is where you whip out your credit card (since June 1, most Indian credit cards are valid internationally), supply the payment details, and you are done. While the actual registration process will take a day or two, you can now go ahead to the members home, select your domain from the list there, and edit its DNS settings.

What is an

MX?
Most people believe that when the Internet needs to deliver mail, it looks up the IP address of the domain and delivers the mail there (that is mail for

user@pcqlinux.com should be delivered to a host named pcqlinux.com). This is not so. Instead, what is looked up, is the domain’s Mail Exchanger

(MX) record. An MX record is an entry in a domain-name system database that directs the routing of mail transfer agents to send information from one location and to receive it at another. Here, we described a machine called ‘gateway.pcqlinux.com’ that actually receives the mail for the domain

pcqlinux.com. It is not unusual for the MX record to point to a host that is not in the same domain as the addressee domain.
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MX settings

This specifies where you want all the mail sent to this domain to go. The default is the ‘I will use EasyDNS catch-all mail forwarding’, which is what you want to leave selected if you do not have a fixed IP address and permanent connectivity to the Internet (that is if you access the Internet using dial-up, cable or DSL). By choosing this option, all mail to your domain is sent to the e-mail address you have specified in the EasyDNS membership profile. You would then use the program fetchmail to retrieve and distribute the mail for your domain on your LAN.

If, however, you have a leased line or any other permanent connectivity to the Internet, and have a fixed IP address for your server (in this case, our Gateway machine), then select the second option (I want to specify my own mail server) and enter the DNS name for the server (which you will define further down). By selecting this, mail for your domain will be forwarded to the server you specified, and it is assumed that this server is set up to handle incoming mail. Here you will also have another option–you can have EasyDNS provide backup mail services in case your leased line is ever down. This means that if mail cannot be delivered directly to your server, it will be stored (for a while) at EasyDNS and will be delivered to your server once the link comes up again. This is a useful option, so enable it. In our case, we use a leased line that has a fixed IP address, hence we select the second option and enter

gateway.pcqlinux.com’.

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The hosts

Next, we need to define some hosts. The first one is the actual domain and its primary IP address. Now don’t get confused here–this is typically not your gateway server’s address but your Web server’s address. If you do not yet have a website, you can enter your Gateway machine’s here, but that would not be a very good idea. Instead, contract for some Web space somewhere, and enter the IP address that your Web service provider gives you.

In our case, we enter ‘pcqlinux.com’ and its IP address. Notice that we do not enter

‘www.pcqlinux.com’ here, as you can see further down, that hostname is set up as an alias pointing to pcqlinux.com. If you do not have permanent and fixed IP address connectivity to the Internet (such as a leased line) you can skip the next step. In our case, we have a leased line and a permanent IP address, so we enter another host name–gateway.pcqlinux.com–and enter its IP address. That’s it, we can now click on Next.

EasyDNS asks you to confirm your settings, and you are done. All you have to do now is wait for the registration process to complete, and in a day or two, your domain will become visible on the Internet and you will be able to send and receive mail using this domain name. While this may sound complicated, you will find it quite easy to maintain all your DNS and domain related entries from EasyDNS’ easy-to-use system–just point your browser to

http://members.easydns.com any time you need to make a change, give your user ID and password, and you can make any change you want–as often as you want.

Atul Chitnis is CTO of Exocore Consulting

and Consulting Editor to PCQuest

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