Main Lab

Overview

For this lab I worked in command prompt to familiarize myself a bit more with nslookup. Objectives:

• Familiarize myself with authoritative and top level name servers.
• Familiarize myself with using nslookup's interactive mode.
• Familiarize myself with MX records.

Part 1 - nslookup Interactive Mode

I began by using the command nslookup to enter nslookup's interactive mode. After this I typed in type=ns which sets the type to the name servers. I then I typed champlain.edu. This gave me back the authoritative name servers for champlain.edu. I then looked into a list of the root zone databases, and found the .band zone and ran an nslookup on it by typing band.

Part 2 - MX Record Types

MX Records are the Resource records that provide the hostname of the mail servers for a domain. To familiarize with looking for these types in command prompt, I set my type to MX records using the command type=MX. I then typed hotmail.com., Champlain.edu., and mymail.champlain.edu. to get the MX records for these sites.

Part 2 - Querying Specific DNS Servers

I then learned that it is possible to use nslookup to query DNS servers other than your local one. In order to do this I typed in server 8.8.8.8 to query as Googles public DNS. I then ran an nslookup on isitblocked.org which came back with the information for the site. I then set my server to Quad9, a free and public recursive DNS server that blocks against known malicious domains, by typing server 9.9.9.9. This time when I ran an nslookup on isitblocked.org it could not resolve the address.