WiscNet considers DNS options
Intermittent outages spur Wisconsin service provider’s evaluation
By Cameron Sturdevant g WEEK LABS Wisconsin-Madison campus, where they would like to be able to delegate
After a series of service out- the event was hosted. (WiscNet and some zone administration tasks to
ages drew sharp attention to e Week Labs first worked together in local administrators rather than
a server-based system that 2003, when six anti-spam vendors have all DNS changes implemented
was built more than 10 years ago, were brought in to prove their mettle through WiscNet staff.
WiscNet decided it was time to look at screening junk e-mail for WiscNet Most important for WiscNet is the
into options for replacing its aging clients.) need to have DNS expertise readily
Domain Name System. In preparation for the event, Wisc- available to correct DNS problems
WiscNet—the education and Net officials, working with eWeek or to restore service when servers
research network provider for K- 12 Labs, developed an RFP that would go down.
schools, colleges
and universities Test plan
in Wisconsin—is wiscnet’s technical leaders iden-
running a DNS tified the key problems with their
system that was DNS and surveyed seven other state
developed years network provid-
ago by engineers ers about the
who have long systems they
since moved on. use to provide
It’s a credit to DNS. All but
these engineers’ one use BIND
scripts and open- Above: Staff from WiscNet and running on a
source BIND other Wisconsin state agencies
judge the solutions presented Unix system;
(Berkeley Internet by DNS vendors. Right: Repre- the exception
Name Domain) sentatives from Alcatel-Lucent was a large state
implementation demonstrate their DNS appliance, university that
that DNS has VitalQIP, based on requirements had recently
workedforsolong set forth by WiscNet. implemented
with so little development work at go out to DNS appliance vendors. one of the DNS appliances that we
WiscNet. Moving the BIND servers WiscNet services more than 1,200 ended up testing.
onto modern hardware has helped zones and more than 54,000 DNS The RFP was sent out to DNS
mitigate risk, but outages occur from records for its school district, college appliance vendors in December.
time to time. and university customers across the The vendors whose responses best
S o, Wi s c N e t a d m i n i s t r at o r s state. WiscNet has a redundant pair of fit Wisc Net’s needs were Alcatel-
asked, Should the infrastructure be DNS servers anda stealth master DNS Lucent, Blue Cat Networks and
updated? server in Madison, as well as a pair of Infoblox. Working with Wisc Net
To help answer that question, Wisc- servers in Milwaukee. With this setup, officials, e Week Labs developed 14
Net and e Week Labs co-hosted a DNS WiscNet provides reliable DNS service demonstration objectives that the
Demonstration Day on Jan. 8 that to its customers by reducing the risk participants would be expected to
brought together three DNS appliance of simultaneous outages. fulfill during a 75-minute presen-vendors with WiscNet engineers and But WiscNet technical support tation using their equipment (see
officials. Alsopresentattheevent were staffers also need the ability to cre- chart, Page 38).
state network representatives from ate accurate reports that show all Each solution had its pluses and
Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, as well domains belonging to a Wisc Net minuses (see review, Page 38), but
as engineers from the University of customer organization. In addition, at the end of [CON TINUED ON PAGE 42]
