Pro DNS and BIND
Everyone has something they don't like to troubleshoot. Chris, who usually posts in the comments, hates printers. For me, it's DNS. Now, DNS should be simple to understand -- and the general concepts are -- but when you're messing with BIND, things can get messy. Especially if you don't know how to use BIND (like a wide variety of people who shouldn't be running DNS servers. cough).
I think if everyone read this book, the DNS world would be a better place. Everything is covered. From questions like "What is a Top Level Domain?" to dumps of DNS packets, it's all here. There's great coverage on how to set up seven (count them, seven) different types of DNS servers -- complete with understandable config files. The author even goes as far as spelling out an organized naming convention for your zone files!
Since BIND has been known to have it's fair share of security problems (yes, that was an understatement), security gets a decent sized discussion in the book. The author won't even get into the topic of Dynamic DNS until the security sections. This is similar to someone taking a gun back from a first-time shooter and saying, "Hey, why don't we talk about that safety lock first."
There are three small things I didn't like about the book. The first was the definition of Recursive and Iterative queries. If I didn't know what they were to begin with, that section wouldn't have helped me at all. The second and third deal with grammar. I, myself, like using commas liberally, while it seems the author, Mr. Aitchison, does not. Finally, there were a few paragraphs with exact same statements as previous paragraphs but no reference to the first. It confused me a couple times re-reading the same sentence thinking, "Is that a typo? Or did he mean to do that?"
Like I mentioned in the beginning, this is definitely a recommended book if you're a BIND admin. I give it a 9/10.
