Hi,

Does anyone know what kind of bandwidth an average DNS server uses?

I have set up primary and secondary DNS servers and was just wondering what kind of bandwidth they use because I heard that they guzzle it up...

Thanks.

Paul
Installations:http://wiredon.net/gt/
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Depends on how you have configured "throttle" settings in the DNS server. I know that DNS servers that are hosted on Windows servers are more bandwidth hogs than UNIX or LINUX servers.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Thanks Eliot.

I haven't configured anything apart from Refresh and Retry etc...It is a Cobalt server as they are so tempremental that I don't want to touch anything.

Paul
Installations:http://wiredon.net/gt/
Support: http://wiredon.net/forum/

you're welcome.

Haven't any experience configuring DNS on Cobalt/RAQ systems, but I have configured DNS on both UNIX and Windows NT server. From what I remembered, I had to continually change the connection settings on the Windows DNS server. With the UNIX server, not much had to be done except updating the DNS tables from time to time with new IP addresses and domain names.

Just a suggestion, in terms of your Secondary DNS server, you should consider hosting it in another part of the physical world for diseaster recovery purposes. If England is destroyed, then no one will be able to access your sites until you re-build both of your DNS servers. Having the secondary DNS server in another part of the world will cause no disruption in accessing your sites. Of course, having a mirror web server in another country is also part of the process.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Hi yes that would be ideal - just need to buy a second server I guess :(

Thanks for responding.

Paul
Installations:http://wiredon.net/gt/
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Actually, you wouldn't really need to buy a second server. All you need to do is research companies of your same size and customers, then you could strike a recipricol hosting deal with another company in another country.

I did this when I was working at one of my previous jobs where we shared hosting with another college on the East coast of America. We hosted their site and served as their secondary DNS server, vica versa. We basically swapped back-up tapes on a regular basis. This was not ideal in terms of keeping pages totally up-to-date, but at least it would help in terms of accessing information. And with distance learning (along with e-commerce), it is important to maintain access for students/customers.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Mmmm that's a good idea - I'll have to have a snoop around for some similar hosting companies. I could even leave the first two nameservers as they are and set up a third with the "partner". This would make an even more reliable service.

Thanks for that idea - it was something I hadn't thought of. I guess that's how some of the opensource/non-profit organizations do it too?....They find people willing to set up mirrors and DNS servers....

Paul
Installations:http://wiredon.net/gt/
Support: http://wiredon.net/forum/

Diseaster Recovery Plans (DRP) are very important in the IT World. At every job, I've worked on committees or researched DRPs for my directors. Identifying what you do in the case of diseasters or even short-term electrical outages or system hacks is important to maintain connectivity to important data for your customers and general web visitors.

And yes, establishing mirror sites is how companies, organizations, and small businesses are able to maintain connectivity for customers, members, etc.

One thing we are doing at my current job is moving to host our web sites on a web cluster server that will allow us to establish dynamic mirror web sites and also mirror data stored in our MS SQL Server 7.0 and 2000 servers. Basically, we can configure the web cluster servers to dynamically activate based on fatal errors (like low CPU and Memory) of our web sites.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Yes, I agree. Therefore 3 DNS servers would be even better than 2.

Just gotta make sure we don't run out of bandwidth....hehe....

Paul
Installations:http://wiredon.net/gt/
Support: http://wiredon.net/forum/