DNS on Network

Hi, I'm running freebsd on a small network that is not connected to the outside world. I want to learn about dns and how to use it but it's a computer on the network. Is there anyway to do this with hostnames or with bogus domains? Thanks!

For learning, you can run authoritative DNS server for your localdomain name with 192.168.0.xx IPs.

Then alter /etc/host.conf file and change the order from:

hosts
bind

to:

bind
hosts

Do you know of any tutorials that might be able to help me out with this? I'm not really sure where to start. I've seen tutorials covering dns but would I just make up domain names and stick them in the hosts file pointing to my freebsd machine? Thanks.

Practically, setting up appropriate /etc/hosts file for LAN should do just fine.

>> would I just make up domain names

Yes, make it up, but make sure it's FQDN and not a registered domain. If it's registered and you're trying to reach that site, then you won't be able to.