Re: DNS on iSeries issue

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> If I change my PC's TCP/IP properties from "Obtain DNS server address
> automatically" to "Use the following DNS server addresses:" and put in
> 4.2.2.1 / 4.2.2.2 it works.  But CHGTCPDMN on the iSeries already specifies
> 4.2.2.1 / 4.2.2.2 for DNS.

First things first...   the numbers in CHGTCPDMN are not part of your 
iSeries DNS server.  They're part of the DNS resolver.

When a program wants to know the IP address for a hostname, or the 
hostname for an IP address, it calls a routine from the DNS resolver. It 
says "hey, I need the IP address for www.creativelyspeaking.com".  The 
resolver looks at the values listed under CHGTCPDMN to find out which DNS 
server to ask for those addresses.  It then asks that DNS server, which 
does all of the gruntwork.

The DNS server on the iSeries won't be a part of that lookup unless 
CHGTCPDMN is pointing at it.

It sounds to me like your PCs are set up to use your iSeries as their DNS 
server.  But, ironically, the iSeries itself uses the ISPs DNS servers.

What you probably want to do is set up the ISP's DNS servers as 
FORWARDERS.  This involves telling the iSeries DNS server that if it can't 
find an IP address, it should ask the ISPs DNS server.  That'll give you 
the best performance, since lots of users use your ISPs server and 
therefore it has a good cache of addresses, and doesn't have to go all the 
way back to the root servers for every query.

Once you have that set up, you'll want to use CHGTCPDMN so that the 
iSeries uses it's own DNS server for lookups -- that way it'll be in the 
same boat as the PCs that use it :)