can i setup dnsmasq as dns server on a subnet using comcast internet?

[tourista-]

can i setup dnsmasq as dns server on a subnet using comcast internet?

comcast does not block ports that i'm aware of.

i was thinking of getting a dyndns.org standard dns account for 1 year.

thank you

[jj3666]

Depends on what the DNS server is for? If you think that it will keep them from seeing your DNS queries you would be wrong, as they are in plaintext and get captured by most ISP's or the government. If it is just as a caching server to improve speed, that is usually not needed on a personal computer. As a backup DNS in case your ISP fails, there are plenty of open ones like google's at 8.8.8.8 that you can use. If you plan on running a DNS server, why?

dyndns.org is good, but has nothing to do with you running your own dns server. You can alias all your subdomains to your router/gateway and have it forward it to the right server internally based on port/application.

[tourista-]

i was not intending on hiding anything from my ISP. i simply had a desire to have a function of something like a BNC to replace my comcast hostmask with a domain i had registered for myself and and hoped that that function would carry over to a home based web server, i have paid web hosting, but wanted to get my hands dirty with one of my domains at something i had once accomplished through the use of zoneedit. i have essentially taken my skills as far as i care to take them, and wanted to see if i could achieve these goals.

[tourista-]

is anyone going to jump in and tell me if dnsmasq can be used as a dns server ? i don't need to cache dns i want an easy way to setup my own dns server. i doubt i'd have aptitude to run a mail server as those are much harder to setup.

[drl]

Hi.

I recently installed dnsmasq. I had success using it for both a dns and a dhcp server on this system:

OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 2.6.26-2-amd64, x86_64
Distribution        : Debian GNU/Linux 5.0

I have around 30 virtual machines, and I used static IPs for them. The hosts file was getting unwieldy, so I experimented with dnsmasq-dhcp serving static IPs to specific VMs, and the dnsmasq-dns part for name resolution. So far it has worked correctly (but with only one VM configured to use it). There are dnsmasq settings so that an /etc/hosts file can be used as the source for names. That's a good stepping stone for me in order to get a handle on all the names.

Any name that cannot be resolved by dnsmasq directly is handed off to the ISP name servers.

The biggest stumbling blocks for me were 1) disabling the internal dhcp server in VirtualBox (in which the test VM was running), and 2) making sure that the VirtualBox networking scheme for the test VM was "bridged" and not NAT. The former required the host machine to be rebooted (one forum thread called that a minor bug, perhaps fixed in later versions, I'm using "2.45-1+lenny1"), the latter just the guest VM to be rebooted.

I use DSL, not cable, so I cannot say whether a Comcast connection works, but the little that I know of such connections leads me to think that it should work.

Good luck ... cheers, drl