dns

The Concise Guide to DNS and BIND
$34.99
The boss tossed this one to me as he felt it was good. This is a good book for going over the core concepts of DNS and BIND.

This is not a "how to" book so if you are looking for config suggestions, don't bother.

If you don't understand DNS or BIND, then this book might be harder for you to follow things as it is geared more on advanced topics.

This book was a good refesher as I learned both DNS and BIND from the O'Reily book.

This book is geared more for the Unix side. The suggested tools will show that. There is some discussion of Windows but it is mainly about Dynamic DNS.

The book is a little dated as BIND 9 was "new" when it was published. It also talked about BIND 4.

Again it is not a bad book for a refresher or to get another explanation on how things work.

DNS on Windows Server 2003
$39.95
This book gets very indepth about DNS. It's dry and very technical making it a hard and boring read. I don't recommend this book for the newbie. You really should have some general knowledge about the subject before buying this book.

The explanations throughout the book are difficult to follow and can be confusing. It could of been better written with a simplified approach.

After reading this book I now realize how dull DNS really is.

The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
$89.95
The TCP/IP Guide is a phenomenal protocol reference. The text is clearly written in a conversational tone. I haven't read it cover to cover, but I keep this book on my desk to refer to with my every protocol question. It hasn't let me down yet!

Alternative DNS Servers: Choice and Deployment, and Optional SQL/LDAP Back-Ends
$59.95
This book is amazing. Jan-Piet Mens unbiasedly covers every modern authoritative and caching DNS server. This includes MaraDNS, tinydns, PowerDNS, and more that most people have never even heard of. Each server is given its own detailed chapter where you learn what sets it apart from the others and how to use it. But make no mistake, the coverage of each server is far from any simple tutorial or how-to you'd normally read. These chapters are packed with information that Jan could easily expand into small books on their own.

In addition to the several DNS servers covered, the amount of other DNS-related topics in this book is amazing. You'll also learn how to make your own DNS server and utility scripts with Perl, international domain names and how to make them work with your server, DNSSEC, nsswitch, DNS blacklists, and dynamic DNS.

I wouldn't recommend this book to people new to DNS. Instead, try O'Reilly's DNS and BIND or Apress's Pro DNS and BIND -- both are incredible books as well. But if you're familiar with DNS, maintain a DNS server or two, just want to widen your view of the DNS world, you would be a fool not to read this book.