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| <TITLE> Dnsmasq - a DNS forwarder for NAT firewalls.</TITLE> |
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| <H1 ALIGN=center>Dnsmasq</H1> |
| Dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder and DHCP |
| server. It is designed to provide DNS and, optionally, DHCP, to a |
| small network. It can serve the names of local machines which are |
| not in the global DNS. The DHCP server integrates with the DNS |
| server and allows machines with DHCP-allocated addresses |
| to appear in the DNS with names configured either in each host or |
| in a central configuration file. Dnsmasq supports static and dynamic |
| DHCP leases and BOOTP/TFTP for network booting of diskless machines. |
| <P> |
| Dnsmasq is targeted at home networks using NAT and |
| connected to the internet via a modem, cable-modem or ADSL |
| connection but would be a good choice for any smallish network (up to |
| 1000 clients is known to work) where low |
| resource use and ease of configuration are important. |
| <P> |
| Supported platforms include Linux (with glibc and uclibc), *BSD, |
| Solaris and Mac OS X. |
| Dnsmasq is included in at least the following Linux distributions: |
| Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Suse, Fedora, |
| Smoothwall, IP-Cop, floppyfw, Firebox, LEAF, Freesco, fli4l, |
| CoyoteLinux, Endian Firewall and |
| Clarkconnect. It is also available as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD ports and is used in |
| Linksys wireless routers (dd-wrt, openwrt and the stock firmware) and the m0n0wall project. |
| <P> |
| Dnsmasq provides the following features: |
| <DIR> |
| |
| <LI> |
| The DNS configuration of machines behind the firewall is simple and |
| doesn't depend on the details of the ISP's dns servers |
| <LI> |
| Clients which try to do DNS lookups while a modem link to the |
| internet is down will time out immediately. |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| Dnsmasq will serve names from the /etc/hosts file on the firewall |
| machine: If the names of local machines are there, then they can all |
| be addressed without having to maintain /etc/hosts on each machine. |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| The integrated DHCP server supports static and dynamic DHCP leases and |
| multiple networks and IP ranges. It works across BOOTP relays and |
| supports DHCP options including RFC3397 DNS search lists. |
| Machines which are configured by DHCP have their names automatically |
| included in the DNS and the names can specified by each machine or |
| centrally by associating a name with a MAC address in the dnsmasq |
| config file. |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| Dnsmasq caches internet addresses (A records and AAAA records) and address-to-name |
| mappings (PTR records), reducing the load on upstream servers and |
| improving performance (especially on modem connections). |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| Dnsmasq can be configured to automatically pick up the addresses of |
| its upstream nameservers from ppp or dhcp configuration. It will |
| automatically reload this information if it changes. This facility |
| will be of particular interest to maintainers of Linux firewall |
| distributions since it allows dns configuration to be made automatic. |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| On IPv6-enabled boxes, dnsmasq can both talk to upstream servers via IPv6 |
| and offer DNS service via IPv6. On dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) boxes it talks |
| both protocols and can even act as IPv6-to-IPv4 or IPv4-to-IPv6 forwarder. |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| Dnsmasq can be configured to send queries for certain domains to |
| upstream servers handling only those domains. This makes integration |
| with private DNS systems easy. |
| </LI> |
| <LI> |
| Dnsmasq supports MX and SRV records and can be configured to return MX records |
| for any or all local machines. |
| </LI> |
| </DIR> |
| |
| <H2>Download.</H2> |
| |
| <A HREF="http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/"> Download</A> dnsmasq here. |
| The tarball includes this documentation, source, and manpage. |
| There is also a <A HREF="CHANGELOG"> CHANGELOG</A> and a <A HREF="FAQ">FAQ</A>. |
| Dnsmasq is part of the Debian distribution, it can be downloaded from |
| <A HREF="http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/dnsmasq/"> here</A> or installed using <TT>apt</TT>. |
| |
| <H2>Links.</H2> |
| There is an article in German on dnsmasq at <A |
| HREF="http://www.linuxnetmag.com/de/issue7/m7dnsmasq1.html">http://www.linuxnetmag.com/de/issue7/m7dnsmasq1.html</A> |
| and Damien Raude-Morvan has one in French at <A HREF="http://www.drazzib.com/docs-dnsmasq.html">http://www.drazzib.com/docs-dnsmasq.html</A> |
| There is a good article about dnsmasq at <A |
| HREF="http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3377351">http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/article.php/3377351</A> |
| and Ilya Evseev has an article in Russian about dnsmasq to be found at <A HREF="http://ilya-evseev.narod.ru/articles/dnsmasq"> http://ilya-evseev.narod.ru/articles/dnsmasq</A> |
| <H2>License.</H2> |
| Dnsmasq is distributed under the GPL. See the file COPYING in the distribution |
| for details. |
| |
| <H2>Contact.</H2> |
| There is a dnsmasq mailing list at <A |
| HREF="http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dnsmasq-discuss"> |
| http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dnsmasq-discuss</A> which should be the |
| first location for queries, bugreports, suggestions etc. |
| Dnsmasq was written by Simon Kelley. You can contact me at <A |
| HREF="mailto:simon@thekelleys.org.uk">simon@thekelleys.org.uk</A>. |
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