Manage DNS- 5 Most Common DNS Issues

Author: Tom Steven

A Domain Name System is one of the most essential building blocks of the Internet. It just acts like a "phone book' of the Internet and translates domain on a global, hierarchical and distributed host information database. These are the names meaningful to humans into numerical identifiers for the purpose of locating and addressing devices on networks globally.

Needless to say, DNS issues can impact productivity and hamper the profitability of your enterprise based business.

1. Faulty Delegation of A DNS Sub-Domain

One of the DNS issues that frequently occur is faulty delegation of a DNS sub-domain. This can slow down the lookups or failure of registering of Active Directory services in the DNS. As a consequence, users may be unable to access crucial data or log on to their computers. Response times may also be delayed due to this issue.

2. Halts in DNS Services

If you fail to manage DNS service halts, machine crashes or mistakes may happen in firewall practices. This may often lead to unreachable DNS server. Unresponsive servers, in turn, result in higher lookup times and reduced system efficiency. DNS queries may stop getting answered and users may be unable to gain accessibility to the Web or their e-mail accounts. This issue is most possibly occurs in an environment with multiple DNS servers.

3. Incorrectly Configured Records

In order to verify the legitimacy of the original IP address, many ERP systems do DNS lookups in reverse domain which is the lookup records that map IP addresses to domain names. If reverse records are not accurately configured by DNS administrators, users may be unable to access SAP or FTP services.

4. CNAME Error

A CNAME refers to a domain name without an IP address that is a commonly occurred Dns error. Such a CNAME error could result in lookup failures and, owing to the non-existent server. This makes it impossible for users to access critical online services. Therefore, it is important to maintain and manage DNS properly.

5. Failed Dynamic DNS Update

A failed dynamic DNS update or a mistaken manual update often results in records not registering on the DNS. In addition, failure in de-registering DNS records, when a service is no longer functional or is moved to a different host results in ghost records. Users will not have the accessibility to the old domain controller as it is not on the network anymore and the new domain controller will remain invisible to them.

An efficient DNS management is desirable for stable monitoring of the DNS records within your enterprise, thus helping you avoid these productivity-hampering issues. A DNS solution that offers centralized domain and database management, auditing, data integrity verification, diagnostics and ease of integration should execute the DNS management requirements of your enterprise.