From 31 October 2012 ZA NiC will no longer be accepting new registrations for za.net or za.org domains. Please see our 14 April 2012 Announcement for more information.

Technical information on the DNS

Here are a few useful pointers.

Feel free to send any interesting pointers to info@nic.za.net.

Sites providing DNS-related pointers:

UGU's page on DNS Networking

FAQs, HOWTOs and manuals:

The DNS resources directory, a very comprehensive source of information on the DNS and related tools
Chris Peckham's comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains FAQ
Another DNS FAQ maintained by Ronny H. Kavli (originally written by Craig Richmond)
DNS Tips and Tricks from the DNS resources directory
Ask Mr DNS archive from Acme Byte and Wire
Paul Vixie's official BIND page, the reference DNS implementation

Public databases and gateways:

a Web gateway for DNS-related tools
IP networks database, a reverse database created from the Internic's Whois info;
Yahoo's index of Whois servers.

The list of DNS related Internet Drafts is available in the DNS resources directory.

Related RFCs, for an initiation to the DNS:

RFC1034 "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities"
RFC1033 "Domain Administrators Operations Guide"

Worth reading for zone administrators:

RFC1912 "Common DNS Data File Configuration Errors"
RFC1713 "Tools for DNS debugging"

Reference documents about protocols and administrative rules:

RFC1591 "Domain Name System Structure and Delegation"
RFC1035 "Domain names - Implementation and Specification"
RFC1032 "Domain Administrators Guide"
RFC1101 "DNS Encoding of Network Names and Other Types"

All RFCs above point to St�phane Bortzmeyer's very useful full-text search on the RFC at Pasteur.