What's a DNS/BIND Name Server?
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Understanding DNS & BIND

Web surfers use domain names to visit Internet websites, they do not remember the numeric IP address of the machine that hosts the desired website. Now there must be a system to translate these easy to remember domain names into numeric IP addresses that host servers can make sense of. The Domain Name System (DNS) is the one that does this translation. It is composed of Name Server computers that maintain a database of domain names and their corresponding IP addresses and are able to translate between these two with the help of resolution software.

BIND - stands for "Berkeley Internet Name Daemon", and is the Internet de-facto standard program for turning host names into IP addresses. The BIND DNS Server is used on the vast majority of name serving machines on the Internet, providing a robust and stable architecture on top of which an organization's naming architecture can be built. The resolver library included in the BIND distribution provides the standard Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for translation between domain names and Internet (IP) addresses and is intended to be linked with applications requiring name service.

Other Sections In This Guide:
Server OS ... Before Anything Else, Hardware Issues, Managed VS Unmanaged Server, Considering A Virtual Private Server, Data Center & Server Connectivity Issues, Web Server Administration, DNS & BIND Overview, Remote Administration