How to make A DNS Server

[Guest]

I have Windows Server 2016, Static IP but how do i get the DNS www.putrandomsomthinghere(DOT)com 

 

I want to host a Website from my home for my Small tech shop and i cant seem to find anything online to host a Domain name at all (or everything i find just puts everything on a Localhost with google domain hosting)

 

 

 

Help?

[Master Disaster]

Do you want a domain name or domain name server? The 2 things are not the same.

 

If you want a domain name server then you tell Windows Server to install the DNS service.

 

If you want a domain name that's accessable on the internet and not just internally then you need to buy it from a domain registration company.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

If you want a domain name that's accessable on the internet and not just internally then you need to buy it from a domain registration company.

This. but i do not want to buy the domain, i want to host it myself

[Enderman]

You don't "make a dns server".

You buy a domain name which is then hosted by dns servers like google or cludflare or whatever.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Nolanrulesroblox said:

This

Google Domain Name for sale, you'll find hundreds of places selling them. Once you've bought the name they'll ask you for some information from your server and will setup the domain so your IP resolves to the domain name instead.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You don't "make a dns server".

You buy a domain name which is then hosted by dns servers like google or cludflare or whatever.

Do i have to buy from a Provider? 

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You don't "make a dns server".

You buy a domain name which is then hosted by dns servers like google or cludflare or whatever.

Of course you can make a DNS, Windows Server has a DNS service and Linux has multiple DNS Server services available through your package manager.

 

You can't create or sell external domains but you can host your own DNS server, in actual fact running a Windows Domain Controller requires you to be running your own DNS.

 

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Nolanrulesroblox said:

Do i have to buy from a Provider? 

You buy from places like noip, google domans, namecheap, etc etc etc

Sounds like you need to do some research on buying one and how to use it.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Of course you can make a DNS, Windows Server has a DNS service and Linux has multiple DNS Server services available through your package manager.

 

You can't create or sell external domains but you can host your own DNS server.

So i cant host like something(dot)com

[Enderman]

11 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Of course you can make a DNS, Windows Server has a DNS service and Linux has multiple DNS Server services available through your package manager.

 

You can't create or sell external domains but you can host your own DNS server, in actual fact running a Windows Domain Controller requires you to be running your own DNS.

 

Yeah you CAN do that, but you need to own the domain name anyway.

Unless you're a control freak it's a lot easier to simply set it up normally and leave it be, hosted by reliable name servers such as google.

It will also be faster for the clients.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Yeah you CAN do that, but you need to own the domain name anyway.

Unless you're a control freak it's a lot easier to simply set it up normally and leave it be, hosted by reliable name servers such as google.

It will also be faster for the clients.

I have Gigabit and 2 ms Response time

[colonel_mortis]

3 minutes ago, Nolanrulesroblox said:

So i cant host like something(dot)com

You can host the server for example.com if you own example.com, but you can't (well, technically you can but you still need to pay exactly the same amount to own the domain and you end up with a bunch more issues) host the DNS records for example.com yourself because you want other people to be able to find it. If you didn't need to buy it, there would be no way to find out who owns the domain and therefore where the authoritative DNS records are.

 

Google domains (https://domains.google.com/m/registrar?nfg) is a reasonably priced site for buying domains.

[Eigenvektor]

Theoretically, providing DNS services on the Internet is as simple as:

 

1. Install a DNS server (e.g. bind9)
2. Configure it
3. Open port 53 to the Internet

 

In practice its a lot more complicated:

 

1. No one knows who you are
No one is going to use your DNS server to resolve host names to IP addresses, because they don't know your DNS server exists. They will use things like Google (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) or Cloud Flare (1.1.1.1).

 

2. There must be order
You can't just configure a DNS server to randomly resolve host names to IP addresses. Each top level domain (TLD), e.g. ".com", ".de", ".co.uk" has a registrar who is responsible for handing out host names and keeping track of who owns them. This means they must recognize you as a DNS provider.

 

3. Redundancy is key
DNS servers are a critical part of the Internet's infrastructure. This means if you want to host a DNS server, you MUST provide at least two servers. These servers must not share a location, IP address, etc.

 

4. You ISP wants a word with you
Your ISP's contract most likely prohibits you from hosting services. If you want to do that, you need to sign up for some kind of business contract, which is going to be more costly.

 

5. You need a static IP

Because DNS servers are used to resolve host names to IP addresses, the DNS server itself must have a (guaranteed) static IP on the Internet. As I said above, you must have multiple DNS servers, which means you must have multiple static IP addresses (preferably with different providers, for the sake of redundancy)

[sazrocks]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

4. You ISP wants a word with you
Your ISP's contract most likely prohibits you from hosting services. If you want to do that, you need to sign up for some kind of business contract, which is going to be more costly.

@Eigenvektor Brings up a good point here. Even if you buy your domain and point it at your home ip address, you still will probably have issues hosting a website from home, since ISPs often block ports necessary for hosting websites on residential connections. You'd be better off hosting the website at your shop or using a hosting service.

[SupaKomputa]

You don't need a DNS server to install a domain to your PC.

What you need is a Static IP Address (fixed ip provided by your ISP).

This way the domain can find your computer through the internet.

 

For dns server, just use a free dns like freedns / cloudflare:

http://freedns.afraid.org/

https://cloudflare.com

 

In the domain admin panel, Set your NS server to the freedns server NS address like ns1.freedns.org, ns2, ns3 and so on.

 

In freedns you add your domain name.

Then create an A record -> * (asterisk).yourdomain.com -> your ip address.

this will catch any request to yourdomain.com (without www) and send it to your ip address.

 

If you don't have a static IP Address you can use a Dynamic DNS service like duckdns, dyndns, cloudflare dynamic dns.

With dynamic dns everytime your IP address changing, it will automatically change to the current ip address.

[mariushm]

First you must buy the domain, so that it's yours. Most must be renewed yearly, they're not lifetime purchases.

You buy a domain from a registrar, for example Namecheap, GoDaddy, lots of other companies. A lot of these companies also offer free DNS service with the purchase of the domain.

 

I personally use Namecheap and I'm happy with them. Once you buy the domain, you get access to a control panel where you can add or remove entries for the domain, and the dns service propagates the changes to other dns services around the world and everyone's happy.

So you can go in control panel and set the IP address that's given to anyone asking what's the ip of  your domain, you can also create subdomains  ex  games.mydomain.net  or nas.mydomain.net and so on.

 

If you don't have a static IP from your ISP, every time your ISP changes the IP you would have to go in the control panel and change the IP for you domain and then it would take up to a few hours for everyone around the world to detect the change and update their internal dns records. Usually it's anything between 5 minutes and 30 minutes.

 

You would want to set up a DNS service if you're not happy with the DNS your ISP gives you or if you absolutely need lower latencies.

A DNS service would cache (memorize dns entries) and return them to computers anytime it's asked ... so for example if your browser asks for ip of google.com and your isp takes 2ms to reply with ip 1.2.3.4 , you could use your own dns instead ... your own dns spends 2ms asking your isp once and then in the future any time a computer in your network asks for the ip of google.com, your computer, your dns server may return that 1.2.3.4 number in less than 2ms.

There's other benefits like going around your own ISP's dns servers, to use external dns servers that may be slower in general but don't censor or don't cause problems.

For example, let's say you want to access a site like google.com that's hosted in lots of datacenters around the world and they have a dns that gives different IPs depending on where the computer asking is physically located. For example, a DNS service from a ISP in Italy will ask google's dns service what ip google.com has, and the dns will return an IP for a datacenter in Germany or Netherlands, or whatever is physically closest to Italy. A US dns service from a US ISP will get an IP for a US datacenter. It sounds counterproductive but in some extreme cases it can be beneficial.

[Master Disaster]

26 minutes ago, mariushm said:

First you must buy the domain, so that it's yours. Most must be renewed yearly, they're not lifetime purchases.

You buy a domain from a registrar, for example Namecheap, GoDaddy, lots of other companies. A lot of these companies also offer free DNS service with the purchase of the domain.

 

I personally use Namecheap and I'm happy with them. Once you buy the domain, you get access to a control panel where you can add or remove entries for the domain, and the dns service propagates the changes to other dns services around the world and everyone's happy.

So you can go in control panel and set the IP address that's given to anyone asking what's the ip of  your domain, you can also create subdomains  ex  games.mydomain.net  or nas.mydomain.net and so on.

 

If you don't have a static IP from your ISP, every time your ISP changes the IP you would have to go in the control panel and change the IP for you domain and then it would take up to a few hours for everyone around the world to detect the change and update their internal dns records. Usually it's anything between 5 minutes and 30 minutes.

 

You would want to set up a DNS service if you're not happy with the DNS your ISP gives you or if you absolutely need lower latencies.

A DNS service would cache (memorize dns entries) and return them to computers anytime it's asked ... so for example if your browser asks for ip of google.com and your isp takes 2ms to reply with ip 1.2.3.4 , you could use your own dns instead ... your own dns spends 2ms asking your isp once and then in the future any time a computer in your network asks for the ip of google.com, your computer, your dns server may return that 1.2.3.4 number in less than 2ms.

There's other benefits like going around your own ISP's dns servers, to use external dns servers that may be slower in general but don't censor or don't cause problems.

For example, let's say you want to access a site like google.com that's hosted in lots of datacenters around the world and they have a dns that gives different IPs depending on where the computer asking is physically located. For example, a DNS service from a ISP in Italy will ask google's dns service what ip google.com has, and the dns will return an IP for a datacenter in Germany or Netherlands, or whatever is physically closest to Italy. A US dns service from a US ISP will get an IP for a US datacenter. It sounds counterproductive but in some extreme cases it can be beneficial.

To add to this, some routers include Dynamic DNS support which is a separate service you subscribe to, you add your information to your router and if your IP address changes the router will automatically handle updating the DNS entries for you. Some also have applications you install on Windows which detect IP address changes and update DNS entries if your router doesn't support DDNS.

[Eigenvektor]

10 hours ago, Nolanrulesroblox said:

I have Windows Server 2016, Static IP but how do i get the DNS www.putrandomsomthinghere(DOT)com

Just to be sure: The server has a static, public, IP address? Is that IP address contractually guaranteed by your provider?

 

For example: I have a cable connection. My IP address "never" changes (unless I unplug the modem for an extended period of time or its MAC address changes). My ISP's contract expressly mentions that this is _not_ a static IP, they do not guarantee any specific address. They expressly disallow me from hosting web services on this connection.

 

(If the IP address is any of 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16 it is not public)

 

10 hours ago, Nolanrulesroblox said:

I have Gigabit and 2 ms Response time

Synchronous or downstream only? If you want to host a service, your upstream is far more important.

 

If you want to host a simple site, your cheapest options is probably:

Buy a domain name, get an account with some site that does the hosting for you. This allows you to concentrate on the content of the site, while leaving all the technical details of hosting, uptime, firewalls, security patches, etc. to people who are specialized on this kind of stuff.

 

If that is not your thing, get a domain name, rent a small virtual server with a hosting company, install Linux, install Nginx or Apache, host your site. vServers are typically very cheap and a small website on Linux doesn't need too many resources and you don't need to worry about a Windows license either.