A Better Way To Manage DNS

December 2009 — Boise State University runs a Cisco Systems network, with Cisco switches, routers, IP phones and wireless access points. But when Version 5.5 of Cisco's Network Registrar naming and address tool approached its end of life with no upgrade path available, the university went shopping for a user-friendly Domain Name System and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol management platform with more functionality.

"The old system was functional on a basic level," said Boise State network engineer Diane Dragone. "But there were a lot of things lacking."

Changing a name in the DNS with the Cisco suite required scrolling through a list to find the proper entry, and the vendor tags needed for the DHCP had to be customized for Registrar. "We were looking for more functionality in management," Dragone said.

The university, Idaho's largest, settled on the Adonis DNS-DHCP management appliance from BlueCat Networks. The 1000 model server was installed in a test mode in June, moved to production in July and fully implemented by early August.

"Once I tested the features and reliability and we were satisfied, I just made an aggressive schedule" for rolling the new management service out across 175 buildings on the 170-acre campus, Dragone said. "The first three weeks or so that I played with it there was a learning curve," but there have been no problems since.

DNS and DHCP are critical services that underlie IP networks. DNS associates domain names used by people with the numeric IP addresses used by computers and networking equipment to route and deliver traffic. DHCP lets systems dynamically assign IP addresses from a range of available addresses as devices come onto and leave a network.

DNS had been a static service that required little active management, making it what Branko Miskov, BlueCat director of product management, called the forgotten service. DHCP often requires even less attention.

"For the most part, DHCP works in the background," Miskov said. "The value added by management has been in monitoring and reporting activity, providing visibility."

For those reasons, until recently, management tools for DNS and DHCP have focused on larger enterprises that require staff members to keep up with network name and address changes. "In a large network, you could be making dozens of DNS changes a day," he said.

But as network complexity has increased, the market for management tools has moved downstream. "It's not just large organizations that have large networks," he said. The proliferation of mobile networked devices and services, such as VoIP, have made active management of those resources more important.