BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain or "named") is the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet, especially on Unix-like systems, where it is a de facto standard. Supported by Internet Systems Consortium, BIND was originally created by four graduate students with CSRG at the University of California, Berkeley and first released with 4.3BSD. Paul Vixie started maintaining it in 1988 while working for DEC.

A new version of BIND (BIND 9) was written from scratch in part to address the architectural difficulties with auditing the earlier BIND code bases, and also to support DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions). Other important features of BIND 9 include: TSIG, DNS notify, nsupdate, IPv6, rndc flush (remote name daemon control), views, multiprocessor support, and an improved portability architecture. rndc uses a shared secret to provide encryption for local and remote terminals during each session.

History

BIND was originally written in the early 1980s under a DARPA grant. In the mid-1980s, DEC employees took over BIND development. One of these employees was Paul Vixie, who continued to work on BIND after leaving DEC. He eventually helped start the ISC, which became the entity responsible for maintaining BIND.

The development of BIND 9 was done with a combination of commercial and military contracts. Most of the features of BIND 9 were funded by UNIX vendors who wanted to ensure that BIND stayed competitive with Microsoft's DNS offerings; the DNSSEC features were funded by the US military who felt that DNS security was important.

The acronym BIND was derived from its first domain use, Berkeley Internet Name Domain, and the server software being the "Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) Server". It was not, as is sometimes assumed, Berkeley Internet Name Daemon. The original acronym is clear from the title of and usage in the original BIND paper, The Berkeley Internet Name Domain Server.

Criticisms

Configuration

BIND requires that domain names be fully qualified in certain contexts, which means that the domain name must include all higher level domain labels, including the dot (full stop) for the root domain, for example, 'www.wikipedia.org.' (note the trailing '.'). The following response to a dig query is an example of what can result when systems administrators forget this critical point:

; QUESTION SECTION:rr.wikipedia.org.              IN      A; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wikipedia.org.          7134    IN      SOA     ns0.wikimedia.org.wikipedia.org.

Zone storage support

BIND offers no stock mechanism to store and retrieve zone data in anything other than flat text files. Patches must be applied if this support is required. Some other DNS servers include support for content storage in other repositories including SQL databases and LDAP directories.

Security

Like Sendmail, WU-FTPD and other systems dating back to the earlier days of the Internet (when security was not such an issue as it has since become) BIND 4 and BIND 8 have had a large number of serious security vulnerabilities over the years and as such their use is now strongly discouraged. While BIND 9 was a complete rewrite, it has still experienced numerous vulnerabilities.

See also

• Comparison of DNS server software (BIND, djbdns, MaraDNS, NSD, PowerDNS, etc.)
• DNS management software

References

Books

• DNS and BIND, Fourth Edition by Paul Albitz, Cricket Liu. 2001. ISBN 0-596-00158-4.
• BIND 9 DNS Administration Reference Book: Name Server Operations and DNS Configuration using BIND Published by Reed Media Services. 2007. ISBN 0-9790342-1-3.

External links

• The official BIND site at Internet Systems Consortium (ISC.org)
• CircleID Interview with Cricket Liu, author of 'DNS and BIND'
• DNS & BIND Resources at Bind9.net
• A Brief History of BIND by ISC
• GeoDNS, a 40-line patch to BIND to allow split-horizon DNS

Configuration sites

• BIND for the Small LAN
• Using DNS with BIND