Heres a really simple way... any novice can create a fully functional website in less than a week.
Websites are the wave of the future. Although many companies are using an online presence to drive business to their brick and mortar stores, many hobbyists also tend to have a bit of interest in developing their own online presence as well. Developing a website from scratch can be rather expensive, but armed with the right tools, and given a little instruction, anyone can develop a professional website in less than a week.
One thing you must always remember is that anyone trying to do a particular job should be armed with the right tools. Having the right tools will definitely make your project a bit easier to complete.
I guess you are scratching your head wondering what type of tools I would be talking about. You see when you are developing a website, you become a builder, a painter, or an artist. You are taking an idea from your head and transforming it into a digital image so to speak. Just as if you were going to build a home from the ground up, take a paint brush and create a masterpiece painting, or take a piece of clay and create a winning statue, you need the right tools to do the right job.
The tools Im referring to are web graphics software, web design software, and ftp file transfer protocolsoftware. These are tools are a must if you want to get off on the right foot. There are so many of these types of programs that you must really do your homework in order to purchase the one the best fits your needs. Some of these programs can even be downloaded for free. Each program focuses on a particular task. The graphics software helps you create images for your website from scratch. The web design software in short helps you to design and build a website from scratch. The file transfer protocol software is you link to sending your completed web pages from you computer to the internet.
Day one should be focused on purchasing cyber "real estate", and purchasing a name for that real estate.
Building a website is like building a new house. You have to purchase the land and then you can purchase the materials to build the home on the land. Lets take a look at this. Every website has a so called name. Example www.1234.com. This is called the domain name. There are many places that you can purchase cheap domain names. They usually run under $10 dollars and are good for about a year. Once you have the domain name you can start looking for a place to host you website. There are many hosting companies that are popping up on a daily basis. Hosting can be dirt cheap or it can be rather expensive. It all depends on the quality of service you receive from the company. Heres another area you should consider researching before you make a purchase.
Day two should be focused on the whole planning aspect of your website.
The planning aspect of your website should be focused on the objective of your website, the audience you are trying to target, and how your competition is doing in the market. Focusing on the objective simply means to think about what you are trying to accomplish with your website. Your goals and accomplishments should fall into this category. You should also be trying to focus on a target market. Many internet marketers feel that you should focus on a niche market. Remember that the internet is a big playing field. A beginner will get lost in the crowd trying to cover several areas. Instead, try and focus on something with less competition but enough competition to stay in business. Targeting a specific market or niche market is basically the audience you are trying to win over.
Day two should also be focused on the look and feel of your website. For example, you should have a mental image of how you want your website should look. It would be safe to say that you could even sketch out a raw diagram of how you want things to look. Pay attention to the color scheme as well. remember that all colors do not coordinate with one another.
Day three should be focused on the type of graphics you plan on using.
In all honesty, web graphics can make or break the success of your online presence. The internet is all about information and speed. Its like going to a fast food restaurant. You go their because you something quick to eat. The internet is similar. A fast loading website will beat out any other website hands down any day. In order to have a fast loading website you must keep your image graphics file size down to a minimum. The more clutter or bells and whistles you add to your site, the faster it will take to load. There are several website design programs out their that will let you know how long it would normally take for you page to load up. Shrinking the file size, saving it in different formats, and even cropping the image can cut seconds off your loading time.
If you want to save money, you can purchase a graphics program and make images and logos on your own. If you are a bit scared of the venture, you have the option of hiring someone to do the job for you. Whatever choice you make, always do your research for the best details and outstanding customer support.
Here we are on day four. Only one day left. Creating your web pages.
This is basically the meat and bones of any website. For the most part, an easy way to build a website is to use what is called a template. Basically a template is a preset model used to create a number of different pages. It saves you time and headaches. Once you find the look and feel of your website, you use that interface as a preset model to help you move along more smoothly. There are many html editors that can help you do this quicker than usual. One thing to remember is that using an html editor prevents you from dealing with actual html coding. Basically what Im getting at is you dont really need to know html when using an html editor.
You want to focus on building links, inserting and formatting text, and focusing on building your other pages throughout your site. Day four is the day where everything starts coming together. Take your time on this day. Dont rush anything. Make sure you are satisfied with one step before moving on. Your website is basically a mirror image of what you stand for. It will reflect on your work ethic and personality.
Congratulations you made it to day five. Give yourself a pat on the back. This day is spent publishing your website to the world.
This is where all you work is tied together and presented in a nice package. In order to do this you need some type of ftp software. In technical terms its called File Transfer Protocol. This is how you transfer your web page files and graphics from your computer to your hosting company. The procedure is rather simple. You basically use a point and click interface. You highlight the file you want to transfer and hit upload or send. The software is rather self-explanatory. Once the site is up on the web, check for links that are not working, or slow download times. Way to go, you have completed your first website without all the technical wisdom. There are a few more details that you will run into, but this is like a crash course of something that is really rather simple.

When you decide to tackle this task, just remember to take your time and plan everything out in advance. Do your research, and learn the basics of the three main software tools that are required. The tools are only as good as the user. If you become stuck or confused on a certain function, seek help. Customer support, chat rooms, or newsgroups. Remember the internet is a world of information. Use it to your advantage.
Follow these steps and you can impress your friends and family. Completing this will eventually get you labeled as a genius or whiz kid.

About The Author

c Copyright 2003 by R. Grisby
R.Grisby distributes ebooks dealing with various topics. The information presented in this article above comes from the Ebook "How to create a website in 5 days." Find it at: www.grisbynovels.com/5daywebsite.htm
uggsu@sbcglobal.net

Have you ever wondered how restaurants get their coffee to taste so good
First of all, restaurants are in the business of pampering you so they devote much more time to the perfection of a good cup of coffee. Sometimes Ill remember a restaurant just because of their excellent coffee.
So what are their secrets and how can you duplicate this recipe at home It may surprise you to find out that the French Press brewing method could be the secret in achieving that restaurant quality taste.
Most fine restaurants use a press pot, also known as the French Press, which produces an extremely rich cup of coffee.
Press pot coffee is coffee steeped for 3-4 minutes between 195 to 205 degrees F. It produces a thicker and much richer taste than an auto-drip machine can produce.
A disadvantage of the French Press is it may leave trace amounts of coffee sediment. But the rich taste more than makes up for the small amount of sediment at the bottom of your cup.
So first, start off with a quality medium roast coffee, which is what most restaurants use. I can give you a couple of good recommendations.
Seattles Best Breakfast Blend, Starbucks Breakfast Blend or Starbucks Sulawesi Coffee is 3 excellent choices. These are full-bodied coffees yet very smooth tasting. They are some of our best sellers at PerfectCoffees.com and work well for French Press brewing.
You want to grind the coffee slightly larger than you would for drip coffee. Too fine of a grind will produce a bitter cup of coffee. If your grind is too coarse, the coffee will taste weak. A quality grinder is the best thing you can do to improve the taste of French press coffee.
Remove the plunger from the press pot and put 1 rounded tablespoon of coarse ground coffee per each 6oz. of water into the pot. You can adjust this to your own taste.
Coffee is 99% water so use clean filtered or bottled water free from chlorine and other minerals that affect the taste of coffee.
Boil the water and remove it from the heat for five minutes before you pour it. This will give you the 195 to 205 degree water that is ideal to brew with. Now pour the 195 to 205 degree water over the ground coffee.
Stir the coffee to get total saturation of the grounds then place the plunger on top of the pot and let the coffee steep for 3 to 4 minutes.
Depress the plunger slowly to push the grounds to the bottom of the pot.
Serve all the coffee in the pot after the 3 to 4 minutes of steeping. Otherwise the coffee will keep getting stronger.
If you have any left, you can always transfer it to a clean, preheated air pot or a stainless steel Thermos. This will keep the coffee hot about an hour without hurting the flavor.
The French press brewing method definitely takes more time but gives us the result we are looking for. Restaurant quality coffee in the comfort of your own home.
Copyright © 2004 PerfectCoffees.com. All Rights Reserved.
This article may be re-published "as is" unedited as long as the authors bio paragraph resource box and copyright information is included. The URLs in the resource box should be set as hyperlinks if used on a web page.

About The Author

Gary Gresham is the webmaster for www.perfectcoffees.com where you can purchase quality coffee, tea, cups & mugs, coffee gifts and delicious desserts online. He offers a free monthly coffee newsletter at www.perfectcoffees.com/newsletter.html.
Gary@perfectcoffees.com

Too many sales letters are shaped into paper airplanes and flown into trash cans because freelancers write sales letters that sell their services. These freelancers have never listened to the quietly- whispered secret that says their sales letters should sell solutions, not services, to yield the best results.
Solutions are jewels; they shimmer in sales pieces.
Prospects will peruse your sales letter if they discover you have a solution or solutions to their existing or future problem or problems.
To write a "solution-savvy" sales letter follow the copywriter

When it comes to investing in your own pair of scuba fins, you have a plethora of choices from a number of manufacturers who continue to advance the engineering they use to produce the most durable, efficient fins possible. While the original, traditional full foot scuba fins are still popular among some people, there are many more styles available now. Most of the new styles of scuba fins are designed by using technical and involved mathematical angles and engineering so that the fin works to the divers advantage as far as efficiency and ease of use.
Some people find themselves being turned off by the complex and technical features of these efficiently advanced scuba fins, leaving them to be content with basic, traditional fins, which is not a bad thing. The main point to remember when purchasing your own scuba fins is comfort. If you are uncomfortable or awkward in a pair of fins, they arent going to work for you as intended. The specialized angles or split fins used to create greater kicking efficiency are only effective if you are comfortable wearing the fin and using it in the water. Comfort is important because only when you are fully satisfied with you fins will you be able to use them properly.
To help you choose which type of scuba fins will work best for your intended use you should research each style. First are the traditional paddle fins. Paddle scuba fins can be either full foot or have an adjustable heel strap. For scuba diving purposes, people most often use the adjustable heel strap fins of any style. Full foot fins are commonly used as snorkeling fins. Traditional paddle fins work to move water up and down as you kick and they are complimented by divers as being useful when free diving or in currents.
Several major scuba equipment companies have released a new, specially engineered paddle fin that provides much more move for you kick. Dacor and Tusa both have scuba fins with the optimized pivoting blade which is a design that angles the fin so every time you are kicking upward or downward the fins are at the most efficient angle for getting a more forceful kick. The specialized angles of these scuba fins alter the angle traditional paddle fins have, which makes you loose full force during part of the kick.
The next type of scuba fins are all altered in some way with splits, cutouts or vents that the manufacturers say enhance the kicking force and efficiency. The most prevalent of these are the split fins, also known as "Bio-fins" by some companies. These scuba fins divide the paddle of the fin into two parts with a sliver taken out of the middle vertically. Many people have come to appreciate the efficiency and forceful strokes split fins have been proven to allow you. The modification to these fins is supposed to minimize the number of kicks needed to get a set distance. Some divers still believe the most capable scuba fins are the basic ones. Again, the fins you choose should be primarily based on comfort and how easily you function in them.
Other types of split fins have horizontal splits or cutouts and vents at strategic places on the paddle. The Apollo Bio-fins are split scuba fins engineered to push water back, as opposed to up and down, like most fins. The Bio-fin acts like a propeller instead of a paddle, allowing you a much easier kicking task.
Force fins are an additional style you have to choose from. This type of scuba fins is considerably smaller than others, but if you are comfortable using them, they can provide equal kicking force. Force fins mimic a small scale whale tail, which is part of the reason they are claimed to have successful kicking efficiency.
Choosing between these broad types of scuba fins is only the beginning. Within each type there are several other designs to pick from and choosing which brand can be difficult too. Most people limit their selection by having a budget or price range not to exceed. Limiting yourself to a budget will not spoil a large selection though, because there is a variety of scuba fins in every price range. Obviously, the basic and simple scuba fin designs will be the least expensive and as the fins advance in efficiency technology and specialized features, the price will rise.
If you are an avid diver, owning pair of durable and efficient scuba fins is a must, so it would be wise to spend a little extra money on fins with some of the advanced features. At asudoit.com there equipment sold for many adventure sports, including several brands and styles of scuba fins. Here you can look through the features of all the broad types of scuba fins such as force, split, full-foot, heel strap and traditional paddle fins. DiversDiscount.com also has a large selection of scuba fins of all types. At this site you pay less than half the original price for the Tusa Platina fins, which have dual blade fins for greater propulsion force. These Tusa scuba fins are high-performance and available at a cheap price at the discount site.
As for shopping by specific brands, you may want to start with the most commonly know names in scuba equipment such as Apollo, Dacor, Oceanic, Sherwood and Tusa. Some scuba equipment companies are conglomerates, which means some of the less known and less expensive brand names you see may actually be made by one of the larger companies. This is a plus for you because often the branch off brand equipment will be cheaper price wise, but with quality and durability nearly equal to that of the more expensive, better known brands. Each of these manufacturers will have scuba fins for all types. Brand name preference is a personal choice, but each of the above brands are well known, reliable names in scuba fins.
Choosing scuba fins is a matter that is based on personal preference and each individuals selection will be different, but none of them are wrong. Because of this, it is helpful to have the wide selection available so that everyones preferences are accommodated. Whatever your choice, know that you are comfortable in the fins before you purchase them and look in to the quality and durability of the fins, as it will determine the fins life span and help you decide if they are worth the money.

About The Author

Laura Cain is a freelance author that writes regularly on items pertaining to scuba diving and snorkeling. You can find many of her articles at http://www.1-scuba-diving-gear.com/ .
The site also features tips on budgeting for scuba equipment http://www.1-scuba-diving-gear.com/scuba_equipment.htm as well as a scuba gear checklist http://www.1-scuba-diving-gear.com/scuba_gear_checklist.htm .

When building your first site the main things that you will probably think about is what types of content you will be adding to your site, how you are going to get visitors to your site and how you are going to generate good revenue from your site.
Well, all of the things mentioned above are crucial things to consider, but then again, what

Are buying your first digital camera Well, you must be confused by the bewildering range of models out there. How do you know which model will suit your needs To make things worse, digital cameras do not come cheap. Choosing a bad camera will easily cost you a few hundred dollars.
In fact, buying a digital camera need not be a difficult task. Ill highlight the key considerations you need to think through before making that purchase decision. Always, always remember to consider these factors when buying a digital camera:

Battery Life
Number of Megapixels
Zoom Lens
Exposure Control
User Controls

Battery Life
This has got to be one of the most overlooked features in digital cameras. I know many people who go for the latest and greatest digital cameras which are short in the battery life department. If you want to take good photos, your camera needs to powered for extended periods of time. Ive found that cost and battery life dont go together - many cheap cameras have good battery life, while some high-end models drain your battery really fast. Make sure you choose a camera that has good battery life.
Number of Megapixels
The megapixel rating of a digital camera determines how much fine detail you can capture in your shots. Typically, the number of megapixels can range around from 2 megapixels to 8 megapixels. How do you decide how many megapixels you need As a rule of thumb, if youre only interested in taking small snapshots to send via email or for posting on the Web, you wont need more than 2-megapixels. If you want large print outs of your gorgeous photographs, then youll probably want to get 5-megapixel cameras and above.
Zoom Lens
Youll definitely want a camera with decent optical zoom. Now the keyword here is optical zoom as opposed to digital zoom. Optical zoom physically moves the camera lenses to zoom in on a subject. Digital zoom, however, digitally averages and magnifies the image within the cameras microchip - resulting in poor picture quality. Many manufacturers advertisements talk about digital zoom instead of optical zoom - so do be careful when choosing. Id recommend getting at least 3x optical zoom in any camera you buy.
Exposure Control
The ability to control exposure settings such as shutter speed and lens opening is critical to professional photographers. Cheaper digital cameras only allow you to shoot photos in automatic mode - just press the shutter release and voila, your picture is taken. More advanced users prefer to tweak the shutter speed and aperture to capture fast moving objects or blur the image background. Choose a camera with good exposure control if you foresee yourself taking on photography as a serious hobby.
User Controls
If you are getting a point-and-shoot camera, make sure you find one thats easy to use. User controls to set resolution, macro mode, flash and exposure should be within easy reach. Of course, if youre a serious photography buff who wants to take the time to tweak all sorts of manual settings, then this many not be so critical. I prefer to try out the camera first in the store - play with the controls and get comfortable with them. Only then will you know whether its comfortable enough for you.
Conclusion
Well, I do hope this article has helped you understand what factors to consider when buying a digital camera. A general piece of advice I can give is - if youre a total newbie, dont go for the latest digital SLR. It may be tempting to get that Nikon D70 right from the start, but Id reckon its much better to start off with a cheaper camera first. Learn, experiment and build up your digital photography skills. Once youre more skilled, then proceed to upgrade to a better camera. Good luck and happy shopping!

About The Author

Gary Hendricks runs a hobby site on digital photography. Visit his website at http://www.basic-digital-photography.com for tips and tricks on buying digital cameras, as well as shooting great photos.
gary_hendricks@basic-digital-photography.com

So, you were pleasantly surprised to learn that you are getting a refund on your taxes. Congratulations! The IRS expects to issue approximately $54 billion dollars in refunds for the 2003 tax year. The question for most taxpayers expecting a return is, "Where is my refund"
Check Your Refund Status Online
The easiest way to check on your refund is to ask the IRS through IRS.gov. On the home page of the site, you will see a "Wheres My Refund" link. Using the service is fairly easy. You will need a copy of your tax return to provide the necessary information to get the status of your refund. Specifically, you need to provide your social security number, you tax filing status and the exact amount of your refund. The reason the IRS requires all of this information is purely for security purposes, to wit, the agency wants to make sure it is giving access only to the taxpayer. Again, all of this information should be on your return. If it is not, something is very wrong!
Once you submit the required information, the IRS will provide online results typically showing:
1. That the return was received and is in processing;
2. The expected mailing date or direct deposit date of your refund; or
3. Whether your refund could not be issued because of a delivery problem.
In some cases, the results may alert you to the fact that the IRS is reviewing your tax return because of errors or questionable entries. In such a case, it is highly advised that you review your return with a qualified tax professional and make absolutely sure that the return will stand up to scrutiny.
How Long Do You Have To Wait Before Checking
If you filed your tax return electronically, you should be able to access the status of your refund within 48 to 72 hours. Since the return is coming into the database electronically, it should be assimilated into the system fairly quickly. If you do not file your return electronically, you are going to have to wait three weeks or more before the status of your return can be checked. As you can imagine, the IRS is receiving an enormous amount of paper tax returns and it takes time to organize and enter the returns into the system.
How Long Should It Take To Receive Your Tax Refund
If you are expecting a refund, the time to issue the refund will depend upon how you filed your return. If you filed a paper return via regular mail, you refund should be issued in six to eight weeks from the date it was received by the IRS. Alternatively, if you filed your return electronically, you should expect to receive your refund in three to four weeks. If you elected to have your refund directly deposited in your banking account, you should take one week off of the above estimates.

About The Author

Richard Chapo is President of BusinessTaxRecovery.com. Visit BusinessTaxRecovery.com to subscribe to a free newsletter offering monthly tax deduction tips for small businesses or contact Richard at Richard@businesstaxrecovery.com.

How To Raise Your Fees
There comes a time when it is inevitable that you must raise your fees in order to maintain both your profit margin and income level. You will find that the greatest resistance to this comes from your oldest clients.
There appears to be a direct correlation between the length of time a client is with you and the amount of outrage they show to your rate increase. This article will discuss the types of clients and how they usually react.
Keep in mind, no matter how you raise fees, how you approach telling clients or amount of lead time you give them, you will lose some clients. This is a given. I have found over the years that a very high percentage of clients lost are those that Im not crazy about working with anyway. Its worked out, for me anyway, that these former clients who complained the most about your fee increase, were responsible for 85-90% of the aggravation I encountered.
Clients are attracted to you for a variety of reasons. We would all like to think that it is because of our brilliant promotional pieces, our award winning designs, outstanding service, etc. The reality is that many clients are using your services strictly because of price. I refer to these clients as price loyal. They are loyal to whomever has the lowest price. This type of client is not particularly sensitive to quality of work or level of service you provide. They go strictly with the lowest price and if you have the opportunity to examine how they run their business, your see it operates on this principle. For me anyway, this type of client is no loss.
There is a second type of price conscious client that is concerned with the quality and type of service being provided to them. You may lose this type of client with a price increase, but youll find that they will be very apologetic about it. These clients truly can not afford the higher rates. They are usually a dream to work with, and I hate to lose them. In this situation, I will try a number of ways to keep them.
Your newer clients usually react in a more neutral manner to a rate increase. They havent been with you long enough to get a true baseline on your fee structures. You stand a very good chance of keeping these clients if the reasons for the rate increase are explained to them and not just dropped on them.
I find that I lose about 5-6% of my clients when I raise my fees. Usually, I suffer no income loss because my higher rates absorb their loss. Remember, the bottom line is you are selling your time, you must make the most efficient and profitable use of it. If your rates stay around market level, you should have little or no trouble finding new clients.
Copyright 2003, DeFiore Enterprises

About The Author

Interested in having your own successful, home based creative real estate investing business Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 17 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses. No time to visit the site Subscribe to our FREE "how to" Home Business Solutions Digest, its like having your own personal coach: mailto:subscribeHBS@homebusinesssolutions.com

coaches@homebusinesssolutions.com

When I was working at a gas station in Chandler, Arizona, fixing windshields for a living, making only $30,000 a year, I had all the drive in the world to succeed.
You see, I was in a franchise. I thought that since I had entered into a business of my own and if I worked it hard enough, I would have success. Man, I was dead wrong.
What I learned is that I could have all the drive and determination in the world, but unless I was behind a timeless, constant and steady product, it would be impossible to succeed.
What I am talking about, is an Evergreen product. When I was introduced to the business I am currently in, I quickly learned the power of an evergreen product. An evergreen product is something that is going to be around for a longtime. Everyone has to be able to use it. It must be a product in high demand consistently.
Health and Beauty sectors produce evergreen products. But, take cosmetics for example

Domain name Servers DNS are an important but invisible part of the internet, and form one of the largest databases on it. Each machine on an internet is assigned a unique address, called an IP address, which is 32 bit number and is expressed as 4 octets. The method user to represent these IP addresses is known as dotted decimal Notation". A typical address looks like this: 199.249.150.4
It is very difficult to keep in mind the IP addresses of all the websites we visit daily, because its not easy to remember strings of numbers. However, we do remember words. This is where domain names come into the picture. If you want to connect to a particular site, you need to know its IP address but do need to know its URL. The DNS gets the mappings of the IP addresses and the corresponding names.
Names and numbers
DNS converts the machine names such as www.xyz.com to IP addresses such as 199.249.150.9. Basically, it translates from a name to an address and from an address to a name.
The mapping from the IP address to the machine name is called reverse mapping .when you type http://www.xyz.com into your browser, the browser first needs to get the IP address of www.xyz.com. The machine uses a directory service to look up IP addresses and this service is called DNS. When you type www.xyz.com your machines firsts contacts a DNS server, asking it to find the IP address for www.xyz.com. This DNS server might then contact other DNS servers on the internet. DNS is therefore is considered as the global network of servers. The great advantage of DNS is that no organization is responsible for updating it. It is what is known as distributed database.
The three letter codes
A DNS server is just a computer thats running the DNS software. The most popular DNS software is BIND Berkeley Internet Name Domain DNS is hierarchical, tree-structured system. The top is donated by.. And is known as the root of the system. Below the root there are seven immediate sub domain nodes and these are com, org, gov, mil, net, edu, Int, etc.
DNS consists of two components

Nameserver
Resolver

Nameserver:
This performs the task of looking up the names. Usually, there is one nameserver for a cluster of machines. If the nameserver does not contain the requested information, it will contact another nameserver. But it is not required for every server to know how to contact every other server. Every nameserver will know how to contact the root nameserver, and this in turn will know the location of every authoritative nameserver for all the second level domains.
Resolver:
This runs on a client machine to initiate DNS lookups. It contains a list of nameservers to use. As we have read, the function of each of these nameservers is to resolve name queries. There are three types of nameservers-primary nameserver, secondary nameserver, and caching nameserver. The secondary nameservers are configured for backup purposes. Caching nameservers only resolve name queries but do not maintain any DNS database files. It is important to note here that any change to primary nameservers needs to be propagated to secondary nameservers. This is because primary nameservers own the database records. The changes are propagated via a zone transfer.
HOW CACHING"WORKS
DNS uses principle of caching for its operation. When a nameservers receives Information about a mapping, it caches this information .further queries for the same mapping will use this cached result, thereby reducing the search cost. The nameservers dont cache forever. The caching has a component called time to live TTL and the TTL determines how long a server will cache a piece of information. So when the nameservers caches receive an IP address, it receives the TTL with it. The nameserver caches the IP address for the period of time then discards it.
When a process needs to determine an IP address given a DNS address, it calls upon the local host to resolve the address. This can be done in variety of ways:
Table look up. On UNIX hosts, the table is /etc/hosts.
The process communicates with a local nameservers. This is named on a UNIX system.
By sending a massage to the remote system that is identified from the information in the file/etc/resolve.conf.
When a nameserver receives a query for a domain that is does not serve, it may send back a referral to the client by specifying better nameservers. Typically operate in the recursive manner wherein any DNS server passes requests it cannot handle to higher level server and so on, until either the request can be handled or until the root of the DNS name space is reached.
The nameservers contain pointers to other nameserver with the help of which it is possible to traverse the entire domain naming hierarchy. A host with the initial nameserver addresses has to be configured. After this, it is able to use DNS protocols to locate the nameserver responsible for any part or the DNS naming hierarchy.
Thus when a nameserver receives a request, it can do one of the following:
It can answer the request with an IP address. This method is called iterative. In this, the client simply asks the server to resolve a domain name. The server accesses its database, finds its IP address and sends that back. If the server does not find the address, it sends back an error ;DNS not found. Contact another nameserver and try to find the IP address for the requested name. Send back a referral to the client specifying the IP address of better nameservers.
A popular user interface, called nslookupis available on the UNIX system. With this, you can perform any DNS function. This program also displays the result to the user. Using is nslookup, you can obtain a listing of all the hosts in a zone. In order to do this, you first need to identify the nameserver for the zone.
The threats that are associated with the DNS are due to the lack of integrity and authenticity checking of the data held within the DNS. Also, other protocols can use host names as an access control mechanism. The internet engineering task force IETF has come up with DNS security DNSSEC extensions to DNS protocol. The main objective to DNSSEC is to provide authentication and integrity to the DNS. These are provided through the use of cryptographic

About The Author

Pawan Bangar,
Technical Director,
Birbals, Ebirbals, SeoBirbals, Hbirbals
India.
Visit us at:
www.birbals.com
www.ebirbals.com
www.hbirbals.com