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General
Q. What is the Cisco® Network Registrar® solution?
A. The Cisco Network Registrar solution provides comprehensive Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) administrative functions to help customers automate and streamline IP networking services, including business-critical tasks such as client configuration and provisioning. It also supports Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), which can be used to download and upload data.
Q. What is a cluster?
A. A cluster is a Cisco Network Registrar instance consisting of DNS, DHCP, and TFTP server protocols running on the same computer.
Q. What is a typical Cisco Network Registrar deployment architecture?
A. The Cisco Network Registrar scalable deployment architecture consists of several local clusters and one regional cluster. The local cluster is deployed in the network to handle DNS and DHCP services, whereas the regional cluster is usually deployed at the data center or the network operations center (NOC) to centrally manage the local clusters.
Q. What is a local cluster?
A. A local cluster handles the DNS and DHCP services in the network. This is the same Cisco Network Registrar server that has been known and deployed by customers over the years.
Q. What is a regional cluster?
A. The regional cluster manages and monitors the local clusters through its cluster management capability, which allows central management of the address space and global protocol server configuration, such as policies, client classes, and scope templates. Using the Web user interface, the administrator at the regional cluster can add and manage a list of Cisco Network Registrar local clusters and their credentials. In addition, administrators can centrally manage the local clusters, such as creating, pulling, and pushing VPNs, DHCP client classes, scope templates, and policies; managing failover pairs; and handling zone distribution. Through the Web user interface, the Cisco Network Registrar administrator can also pull subnet use and IP lease history data from the local clusters.
New Features
Q. What are the major new features in Cisco Network Registrar 6.3?
A. Cisco Network Registrar 6.3 offers the following features:
• Resolution exception forwarding
• Enhancement to forwarding performance
• Support for Solaris 10
Q. What is resolution exception forwarding?
A. The resolution exception forwarding feature allows users to configure exception resolution for a given domain in conjunction with the existence of the name server record of the server for the same domain in cache. This feature lets users configure Cisco Network Registrar to select one of the following choices:
• Forward-always: The Cisco Network Registrar DNS server will forward the query only to the servers listed on the exception.
• Forward-first: The Cisco Network Registrar DNS server will first attempt to forward the query to the servers listed in the exception (as noted above). If no response is received, the DNS server will then attempt to query the same servers listed in the cached name server records.
• Forward-last: The Cisco Network Registrar DNS server will first attempt to forward the query to name servers listed in the cached name server records. If no response is received, the server will then attempt to query the servers listed in the exception.
Q. Why is resolution exception forwarding significant?
A. An intelligent DNS server needs to be able to handle resolution exceptions and name server records of a server for a given domain simultaneously. Traditional DNS servers allow users to configure exception resolution for forwarding queries of a domain. However, if there is a name server record of a server for the same domain in the cache, the DNS server will ignore the setting in the resolution exception. With support of this feature, Cisco Network Registrar gives users the flexibility of specifying how DNS queries are handled in the situation where both resolution exceptions and name server records of the server for the same domain are configured on the same server.
Q. What is resolution exception?
A. Resolution exception is a feature that allows the end user to specify a list of forwarders (that is, servers) for a given domain. When a DNS server receives a query for that domain and the server doesn't have the answer in its cache, it will forward the query to the configured (resolution exception) server.
Q. Why does Cisco Network Registrar need to improve the DNS forwarding performance?
A. The Cisco Network Registrar DNS server can be configured as a caching server, which forwards all DNS queries to authoritative servers. This release improves the way Cisco Network Registrar forwards queries to improve its DNS performance. One of the enhancements is to use hashing algorithm to quickly determine whether there are duplicate requests coming from a client. This detection prevents Cisco Network Registrar from adding unnecessary traffic on the network and still correctly and efficiently resolves DNS queries. This enhancement effectively improves the DNS throughput and in Cisco Network Registrar allows for better management of DNS load in the server.
Q. Why does Cisco Network Registrar support Solaris 10?
A. Sun Microsystems today ships its servers with Solaris 10 preinstalled. Without support of Solaris 10, users must remove the operating system from the server and then install either the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 operating system before they can actually begin the Cisco Network Registrar installation. To help users improve their business operation, Cisco Network Registrar now supports Solaris 10 and can be installed on a server with this operating system preinstalled.