Unix DNS Administration

It is quite simple to setup your DNS server to host a multilingual domain name. If you have experience managing domain names, you will find that managing multilingual domain names is very similiar to DNS hosting of ASCII domain names. If you are new to domain name hosting in general, follow this guide for detail instructions on how to host your own multilingual domain name.

Important:

Before you begin, there are 2 conditions that you must meet. Check that:

The domain name you intend to host must have been registered with i-DNS.net through our registrar partners.
You have modified your name server such that it would be able to handle multilingual domain name queries. If you have not done so, read this section

*Note: Multilingual Strings are converted into different ASCII compatible encodings(ACE) depending on the language. The examples given in this guide use UTF5. Please use the correct ACE encoding based on the following table:

Language ACE string

Chinese(Simplified & Traditional) UTF5

Tamil, Hindi, Telugu UTF5

Arabic RACE

Japanese RACE

Korean RACE

Others RACE

Step 1: Preparation

Convert your multilingual domain name to UTF5 / RACE*
The legal range allowed in URLs is ASCII A-Z, 0-9 plus a ‘-’. Therefore, first convert the native string of your multilingual domain name to UTF5 / RACE *format.
To convert native strings to UTF5 / RACE*, you can :
1. Download ccode.exe (Windows)
Prepare the hostname of your Primary DNS server and IP address of your web server
The hostname is the one that was registered by you for your multilingual domain name during registration.

Step 2: Add UTF5 / RACE* entry to BIND configuration file
Add the UTF5 / RACE string of your multilingual domain name to your name server configuration file. BIND 8 expects the configuration file to be named named.conf while BIND 4 expects the configuration file to be named named.boot.

Here is a sample BIND 4 configuration file (named.boot):

; Example BIND 4 configuration file(UTF5) directory /var/named cache db.cache primary 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa db.127.0.0 primary L6FDP645L316L7DFL40D.NF51NEDC db.idns_chinese

Here is a sample BIND 8 configuration file (named.conf):

; Example BIND 8 configuration file (UTF5) options { directory /var/named; }; zone 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa in { type master; file db.127.0.0; }; zone L6FDP645L316L7DFL40D.NF51NEDC in { type master; file db.idns_chinese; } zone . in { type hint; file db.cache; };

This configuration file specifies that this nameserver is authoritative for the domain (whose UTF string is L6FDP645L316L7DFL40D.NF51NEDC)

Step 3: Configure your zone file
The zone file here refers to the datafile(db.xxx) that you’ve specified for your multilingual domain in the configuration file.

In the previous sample, the zone file for the domain is db.idns_chinese.

There are many ways to configure a zone file.
A very basic zone file contains 3 types of records:

1. SOA(Start of Authority) record
2. NS(Name server) record
3. A (Address) record

in the following format :

@ IN SOA < name server hostname > < contact person > ( 2000010201 ; Serial 10800 ; Refresh after 3 hours 3600 ; Retry after 1 hour 604800 ; Expire after 1 week 86400 ) ; Minimum TTL of 1 day IN NS < name server hostname > IN A < web server IP >

where:
< name server hostname > is the hostname of the primary name server that you’ve provided i-DNS.net when you registered your multilingual domain name.

< contact person > is the email address of the person in charge of this zone. ( @ sign in the email is replaced by a dot)

< web server IP > is the IP address of the web server for your domain name.

Here is an example of the zone file(db.idns_chinese) for domain "L6FDP645L316L7DFL40D.NF51NEDC":

@ IN SOA ns1.i-dns.net. admin.i-DNS.net. ( 2000010201 ; Serial 10800 ; Refresh after 3 hours 3600 ; Retry after 1 hour 604800 ; Expire after 1 week 86400 ) ; Minimum TTL of 1 day IN NS ns1.i-dns.net. IN A 208.184.174.12

The above is the most basic setup for your multilingual domain. If you restart your name server now, it will be able to answer queries properly. In other words, in this example, if someone queries this name server for , your name server would return IP address "208.184.174.12".

Other Additions
If you wish to add a host in front of your domain, first convert the host string to UTF5 and then add a "A" record to your zone file :

<host_string_UTF5> IN A <webserver IP for this host>

For example, for our previous sample zone file, to add a new record for "" and point it to IP address 208.184.174.13, first convert the host string "" to UTF5 string. The result is O04CL458. Add a line to your zone file for this host:


O04CL458	IN	A	208.184.174.13

or if you prefer to use a canonical name for it:


O04CL458	IN	CNAME	staff
staff		In	A	208.184.174.13

An example zone file is shown below:

Step 4: Restart your name server

After restarting your name server, you may test your new configuration with:

dig <domain name> @localhost

If you did not get an proper answer section, you may wish to check your system logs to see if your name server had started without any errors. If there were errors, please check the syntax of your named configuration file and the zone file.

What you’ve just done is to return an IP address whenever a client(application) queries this name server for the IP of your multilingual domain.

The client who made the query will now know which IP to send subsequent request to. Assuming that this IP is where your web server is running, the client (web browser) will send a http request to the web server asking for the webpage of your multilingual domain. Your web server will return a page from the web server’s default directory to the client.

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