[ Thanks to Mayank
for this link. ]
If the DNS HOWTO isn’t cutting it for you, you may want to take
a look at this explanation and walkthrough of setting up DNS
clients and servers for your network from FreeOS.com.
Let’s say kshounish1, kshounish2, kshounish3,
kshounish4, and kshounish5 are the 5 machines in a network, then
for communication between each machine, each machine’s /etc/hosts
file should have all the five entries of the machine name. Within
this small network there would be no problem if you add another
machine say kshounish6 in the network. But for this too, the
network administrator has to go to each machine, add the kshounish6
in /etc/hosts file and then comeback to the new comer kshounish6
machine and add all the other entries (kshounish1…kshounish5)
including its own name also in /etc/hosts file.But what if the network is setup with say 60 machines and a 61st
machine has to be added? Then administrator will have to go to each
machine again and write the new machine?s name at /etc/hosts/ file
and again comeback and write all the 60 machines name on the 61st
machine’s etc/hosts file which is a tedious and time taking job.
Thus, it is better to keep a centralized server, where all the
ipaddresses will stay and if a new one does enter into the network
then the change will have to be done at the server and not on the
client?s machine. And a better way of setting that client-server
networking concept is having one master server and 3-4 slave
servers for it.