Question setting up DNS

I have read several of the posts related to setting up a DNS server on Windows XP already. Even after spending several hours reading this and other resources, I am having a hard time figuring out what I'm doing.

What I am trying to do is to set up a DNS server using BIND9 on this Windows XP system to work with a domain name I registered and the web site I am hosting with Apache 2.0 from my home computer through a DSL connection shared through a Linksys router using DHCP.

The name of the domain I registered is randomravings.net
The static IP I use is 63.196.254.92
The computer I am trying to set up the DNS server on is on the subnet at 196.168.1.100. Even though I'm using DHCP, I only ever use this computer so the subnet IP remains the same.

I have successfully set up my Apache server so that anyone on the net can view my site by typing in 63.196.254.92 if my computer is on.
I have set the router to forward port 80 TCP/UDP to 196.168.1.100.
I have also set the router to forward port 53 TCP/UDP to 196.168.1.100.

By following the examples in previous posts I have installed BIND9 into windows/system32/dns/bin.
I generated a rndc.key into windows/system32/dns/etc based on the instructions in the readme1st.txt.

So now, in the windows/system32/dns/etc folder I have the following files:
1.0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA.zone
named.conf
named.pid
randomravings.net.zone
rndc.key
root.hint

I copied these files directly without modification from URL
root.hint

These files I modifed based on what I thought the values should be to work for the DNS server settings I want. I'm not sure if this is correct though since I really have no idea what these commands are actually doing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
randomravings.net.zone
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$TTL 3600
$ORIGIN randomravings.net.

@ IN SOA ns1 randomravings.net. (
10 ; Serial
10800 ; Refresh after 3 hours
3600 ; retry after 1 hour
604800 ; expire after 1 week
86400 ) ; Minimum TTL of one day

IN A 63.196.254.92
IN NS ns1
IN NS ns2
IN MX 10 mail

localhost IN A 127.0.01
ns1 IN A 63.196.254.92
ns2 IN A 63.196.254.92

server1 IN CNAME @
mail IN CNAME @
www IN CNAME @
ftp IN CNAME @
ssh IN CNAME @


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
named.conf
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
options {
# Set the working directory from which all relative paths are based

directory "/windows/system32/DNS/etc";

# Change default to 'no' cause I don't have other server

notify no;
};

# I'm a log fan
logging {
channel query_logging {
file "/windows/system32/DNS/log/dns.log"
versions 3 size 100M;
print-time yes; // timestamp log entries
};
category queries {
query_logging;
};
category lame-servers { null; };
};

# Specify the root name servers
zone "." IN {
type hint;
file "root.hint";
};

# example zone used for testing of DNS software I develop
zone "randomravings.net" {
type master;
file "randomravings.net.zone";
};

# and of course the reverse lookup for the zone
zone "1.0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "1.0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA.zone";
};
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA.zone
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@ SOA ns.randomravings.net. (
1 ; Serial
21600 ; Refresh
1800 ; Retry
604800 ; Expire
900 ) ; Cache TTL

NS ns.randomravings.net.

PTR randomravings.net.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, so those are what the modifications I made look like. Once I was finished doing that I went to admin tools, services, and manually started ISC BIND. Previous to my modifications I had tried to start this service and it terminated in a similiar manner to someone elses post. This time, the service started and didn't crash, so it seems to be working fine.

Unfortunately even though it's working fine, I don't know if the way I have it configured makes sense. ><

Following directions I have read previously, I went to the site where I registered my domain and I set up randomravings.net to point to two nameservers that I made up arbitrarily. These are as follows

ns1.randomravings.net
ns2.randomravings.net

Both of these are attached to the IP 63.196.254.92

So based on all of this, I am hoping that the domain will finally point to my IP. But when I look up URL on URL it shows that it is still at park7.secureserver.net which is the parking spot of the registration company. I'm not sure if it just hasn't switched over yet, or if everything I have done to configure the DNS on the server and with the domain name is garbage.

Any advice on what to do, or some pointers to resources geared towards someone with less technical experience can be found, would be really appreciated.

Thanks

There is communication problems with the server.

UDP
http://serialcoders.sytes.net/cgi-b...ype=A&submit=DS

TCP
http://serialcoders.sytes.net/cgi-b...ype=A&submit=DS

I'm willing to bet that BIND isn't even running cause there was an error. Make sure the config files is located in the following folder:

C:\Program Files\DNS\etc

Either that or modify the directory directive in named.conf. My named.conf says this:

directory "/Program Files/DNS/etc";

Change yours to reflect the relative location of all filenames specified in named.conf.

If you had already done this, then start bind at the commandline:

C:\Program Files\DNS\bin\>named -f

You should get a readout of all the errors that occured.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I don't have this computer on all the time ><. So when you checked this you got a communication error cause the computer was off. My bad.

I just check it and it works!!! I guess I followed all the examples correctly. =) Thanks for all those awesome posts SilentRage.