Clarification on roles of networking components.

[Simon Slater]

On Wed, 2009-03-04 at 03:55 -0500, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Simon Slater wrote:
> > 	Is there any overlap in the functions of NIS, bind and LDAP?  Or are
> > these mutually exclusive?
> 
> I would be surprised if you needed either NIS or LDAP for a SOHO
> network.  However, I would say NIS and LDAP are similar, but bind (i.e.
> DNS) serves a fundamentally different purpose.
> 
> > 	When using DHCP, is /etc/hosts redundant?
> 
> Well, you won't /need/ to use it.  You configure a server to assign IPs
> (DHCP) and automatically tell other computers which computer maps to
> which IPs (DNS).
> 
> > 	What is the optimal way to resolve names in a small but growing
> > network?
> 
> Depends how small, of course.  But I would think a simple DNS/DHCP
> server like dnsmasq is reasonable for such a network.  See
> http://www.linux.com/articles/149040 for a good start.
> 
> Matt Flaschen
> 
Thanks Matt.  I saw dnsmasq mentioned in one how-to but didn't chase it
since I was focussing on DHCP and bind.  Now there are half a dozen
boxes, but will increase to 2 dozen over the next year.  Is this still
within the scope of dnsmasq?  As that article suggests I would like to
have the server do the work rather than have the DSL router handle DHCP,
firewall etc.  Realising there are a variety of solutions, I don't want
to come against Ockham's Razor.

-- 
Regards,
Simon Slater
Registered Linux User #463789. Be counted at: http://counter.li.org/