Technical information on the DNS

Here are a few useful pointers.

Feel free to send any interesting pointers to the page maintainer.

Sites providing DNS-related pointers:

FAQs, HOWTOs and manuals:

The DNS resources directory, a very comprehensive source of information on the DNS and related tools
GraniteCanyon's FAQ about DNS in general and their DNS hosting services in particular
Chris Peckham's comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains FAQ
Another must-read, the HTML version of the BIND operations guide
Another DNS FAQ maintained by Ronny H. Kavli (originally written by Craig Richmond)
The Linux DNS Howto (does apply to other Unixes as well), mirrored in France (also translated to French)
DNS Tips and Tricks from the DNS resources directory
Scott Newton's TCP/IP tutorial, DNS section

Tools:

Public databases and gateways:

a Web gateway for DNS-related tools
IP networks database, a reverse database created from the Internic's Whois info;
The IP troubleshooters page contains a lot of interesting pointers on documents and tools, and to public gateways to use whois, nslookup, ping, traceroute.
Yahoo's index of Whois servers.

The list of DNS related Internet Drafts is available in the DNS resources directory, along with a a complete list of DNS RFCs.

Related RFCs, for an initiation to the DNS:

Worth reading for zone administrators:

Reference documents about protocols and administrative rules:

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

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