DNS and BIND, Fifth Edition - New From O'Reilly

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with
the authors, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7094 or kathrynb@oreilly.com

Liu and Albitz Update Their Classic Guide to DNS and BIND
O'Reilly Releases "DNS and BIND, 5th Edition"

Sebastopol, CA--Most Internet users surf the Web and send email with
scarcely a thought of DNS, the Domain Name System. Yet DNS and BIND are
the fundamental building blocks of the Internet as we use it. DNS handles
mapping between hostnames, which we humans find convenient to remember,
and Internet addresses, which computers deal with.  DNS is, in fact, the
standard mechanism for advertising and accessing all kinds of information
about hosts, not just addresses, and making it available all over the
Internet. DNS may be transparent to users, but establishing and
maintaining a workable DNS configuration is an increasingly complex task
with which system administrators wrestle regularly.

"DNS is being used for many more applications than in the past," observes
Cricket Liu, coauthor with Paul Albitz of the new edition of "DNS and
BIND" (O'Reilly, US $49.99) "With ENUM (electronic numbering), DNS is used
by voice-over-IP gear. With SPF (the Sender Policy Framework), mailers
look up information in DNS to check for mail spoofing. This makes DNS more
critical than ever, and a target for hackers," says Liu. "To handle these
additional applications and increased threats, DNS has had to be extended,
adding cryptographic security, for example."

These topics and others are covered in the new edition of "DNS and BIND."
Security is necessarily one of the topics covered exhaustively in the
book. Liu points out that "as we've come to rely more on DNS, we've also
seen name servers on the Internet targeted by hackers more and more. In
previous editions of the book, we described how to secure name servers,
but I think most readers felt the likelihood of their name servers coming
under attack was remote. Today, I think it's actually fairly likely," he
says.

"There's been a recent spate of DNS amplification attacks in the news,"
Liu adds. "It's incumbent on the administrators of Internet name servers
to guard against these by limiting access top recursion, which we cover in
a chapter called 'Security.'"

Authors Liu and Albitz are among the world's foremost experts on DNS and
BIND. Their book, now in its fifth edition, has long been considered the
de facto bible on the subject and essential reading for any network or
system administrator involved with DNS. The new edition covers BIND 9.3.2,
the most recent release of the BIND 9 series, as well as BIND 8.4.7.  BIND
9.3.2 contains further improvements in security and IPv6 support, and
important new features such as internationalized domain names, ENUM, and
SPF.  Beginning with an introduction to DNS and what it does, the book
guides administrators through all aspects of setting up, configuring, and
working with the distributed host information database.  Other topics
include using MX records to route mail, subdividing domains (parenting),
the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and Transaction Signatures (TSIG),
dynamic updates, troubleshooting, and DNS programming using the resolver
library and Perl's Net::DNS module.  Anyone who works with DNS regularly
or wants to be more informed about the Internet and how it works is sure
to want a copy of this book close at hand.

Additional Resources:

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bios, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dns5/

For a cover graphic in JPEG format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596100...

DNS and BIND, Fifth Edition
Cricket Liu and Paul Albitz
ISBN: 0-596-10057-4, 616 pages, $49.99 US, $64.99 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472

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