DNS Intro and Configuration

The most common configuration which users have to modify for themselves is DNS, or the Domain Name System.  An easy way to find an example of how to configure your domain is to examine similar records of FasterGreener.net itself, using common tools.

To check common entry types on Windows and older toolsets for UNIX and GNU/Linux:

nslookup www.fastergreener.net
nslookup fastergreener.net
nslookup -query=MX fastergreener.net
nslookup -query=TXT fastergreener.net

Using commonly found newer tools for UNIX and GNU/Linux:

host www.fastergreener.net
host fastergreener.net
host -t mx fastergreener.net
host -t txt fastergreener.net

You should encounter output similar to the following:

justizin@juspire:~$ host www.fastergreener.net
www.fastergreener.net is an alias for front.fastergreener.net.
front.fastergreener.net is an alias for dodgey.fastergreener.net.
dodgey.fastergreener.net has address 208.43.23.195
justizin@juspire:~$ host fastergreener.net
fastergreener.net has address 208.43.23.195
fastergreener.net mail is handled by 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
fastergreener.net mail is handled by 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
fastergreener.net mail is handled by 30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
fastergreener.net mail is handled by 40 aspmx2.l.google.com.
fastergreener.net mail is handled by 50 aspmx3.l.google.com.
justizin@juspire:~$

Some tools, such as BIND 9's 'host', will pull MX records when querying the top-level.  We use Google Hosted Services for E-Mail and follow instructions from http://www.google.com/a/.

You can see here that 'www.fastergreener.net' is an 'alias', or 'CNAME', for 'front.fastergreener.net'.  Your domain should have a 'www' entry which is an alias for 'front.fastergreener.net', such as 'www.pushtotest.com'.  Any time our network is reconfigured, this will change, ensuring your visitors the most efficient path to our server(s).  We will typically maintain redirection or proxy services at the old address, but only for a limited time as circumstances allow.

It is, additionally, common for websites to be accessed using the short version of their domain, such as "http://fastergreener.net/".  Due to the way that some e-mail systems work, this cannot be an alias, but must point directly at the main web server's IP address, such as, at the time of this writing, '208.43.23.195'.  Our web server will always be configured to proffer a permanent redirect to the 'www' hostname for your site, for a number of reasons, most importantly that bookmarks and search engines will never point at a URL which may be temporariliy misconfigured due to an IP change at our end.

If you have websites hosted on our servers which are a subdomain, such as 'sales.pushtotest.com', it should be OK to use an alias to 'front.fastergreener.net', as long as you don't plan to use e-mail for that domain, such as is the case for 'lists.pushtotest.com', which is a good example of a special case that we'll revisit soon.

In the case of hosted development resources, such as CVS, Subversion, Bazaar-NG, Mercurial, GIT, and Trac, a CNAME to 'dev.fastergreener.net' should suffice, such as is the case for hosts such as 'svn.pushtotest.com', 'dev.pushtotest.com' and 'bugs.pushtotest.com'.

The special case of 'lists.pushtotest.com' represents a situation where a subdomain has all of the DNS complexities of the main domain 'pushtotest.com', as it provides a web interface and participates in SMTP conversations.  Another reason this is a special case is that it is a customer-dedicated system, we maintain a hostname 'pttlists.fastergreener.net' so that we can easily reach the machine in the case of a client DNS failure, but 'lists.pushtotest.com' has an A record pointing directly at its' IP.  DNS tools can still be used as illustrated above to determine the destination of such an A record.

Of course, customers with such a special case will typically be well informed in advance as to changes,  but such details are useful as examples for documentation purposes.

That's it!