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40 Chapter 2 Inside Mac OS X Server
Network Services
Mac OS X Server includes these network services for helping you manage Internet
communications on your TCP/IP network:
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
• Domain Name System (DNS)
• Firewall
• Network Address Translation (NAT)
• Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• Network time service
• IP failover
The network services administration guide provides complete information about all
these services except IP failover, which is described in the command-line
administration guide.
DHCP
DHCP helps you administer and distribute IP addresses dynamically to client computers
from your server. From a block of IP addresses that you define, your server locates an
unused address and “leases” it to client computers as needed. DHCP is especially useful
when an organization has more clients than IP addresses. IP addresses are assigned on
an as-needed basis, and when they are not needed they are available for use by other
clients.
As you learned in “Search Policies” on page 31, you can automate the directory
services setup of Mac OS X clients using your DHCP server’s Option 95 support.
This recommended option lets client computers learn about their directory settings
from a DHCP server.
DNS
DNS service lets users connect to a network resource, such as a web or file server, by
specifying a host name (such as server.apple.com) rather than an IP address (such
as192.168.11.12). DNS is a distributed database that maps IP addresses to domain names.
A server that provides DNS service keeps a list of names and the IP addresses
associated with the names. When a computer needs to find the IP address for a name,
it sends a message to the DNS server (also known as a name server). The name server
looks up the IP address and sends it back to the computer. If the name server doesn’t
have the IP address locally, it sends messages to other name servers on the Internet
until the IP address is found.
You will use DNS if you use SMTP mail service or if you want to create subdomains
within your primary domain. You will also use DNS if you are hosting multiple websites.
If you don’t have an Internet service provider (ISP) who handles DNS for your network,
you can set up a DNS server on your Mac OS X Server.
LL2343.Book Page 40 Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:12 PM