BIND 8 End-of-Life Prompts Migration to New, More Advanced DNS Systems

ISC and Infoblox Offer BIND 8 Transition Strategies

September 11, 2007; 01:15 AM

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Infoblox Inc. and ISC today announced availability of several resources to assist enterprise IT departments in the transition from BIND 8 – end-of-lifed (EOLed) on Aug. 27, 2007 – to new, more advanced BIND 9 DNS implementations.

Infoblox Inc., and ISC today announced availability of several resources to assist enterprise IT departments in the transition from BIND 8 – end-of-lifed (EOLed) on Aug. 27, 2007 – to new, more advanced BIND 9 DNS implementations.

The Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND) is the open source reference implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS), which is analogous with the network "phone book" that translates names, such as www.yahoo.com or finance.companyx.com, to numeric IP addresses, such as 66.94.234.13 or 192.168.1.16. DNS is an essential core network service that plays a role in almost all network applications, including Web surfing, e-mail, Microsoft’s Active Directory, ERP, CRM, unified communications, and others.

The Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND) is the open source reference implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS), which is analogous with the network "phone book" that translates names, such as or finance.companyx.com, to numeric IP addresses, such as 66.94.234.13 or 192.168.1.16. DNS is an essential core network service that plays a role in almost all network applications, including Web surfing, e-mail, Microsoft’s Active Directory, ERP, CRM, unified communications, and others.

BIND version 8 – initially released as open-source software by the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) in May 1997 – saw rapid adoption and became the most widely deployed DNS implementation for enterprises, for both internal and external DNS. Numerous enhancements were made to BIND 8 following the initial release. And, based on user requests and lessons learned, ISC developed a next-generation version, BIND 9, which was released in 2000.

Most organizations now run BIND 9, but there are still a significant number of BIND 8 deployments in production. According to a survey by The Measurement Factory and sponsored by Infoblox, there were more than one million deployments of BIND 8-based name servers on the Internet in 2006. This does not take into account internal implementations, which are estimated at more than three times that number.

ISC founder and BIND 8 author Paul Vixie commented, "It’s never easy to retire a product, but after 10 years of service and millions of deployments, it’s time to end-of-life BIND 8. It has a number of inherent architectural limitations which have been addressed in BIND 9, and BIND 9 also has support for a number of key functions, such as views and the latest version of the DNS security extensions. ISC strongly encourages enterprise IT departments to transition to BIND 9 and is pleased to join with Infoblox in offering tools to help with this transition."

Cricket Liu, DNS expert, co-author of O’Reilly & Associates’ books on DNS and vice president of architecture at Infoblox, concluded: "DNS is the foundation of all network applications and services. It simply has to be secure, reliable, and up-to-date. Delivering DNS services with an outdated BIND version can jeopardize an organization’s entire IT infrastructure. We encourage all BIND 8 users to access our tools, including our new BIND 8 Transition Guide, to accelerate and ease their migration to BIND 9."

Transition Resources

Cricket Liu and Joao Damas, ISC’s Sr. Programme Manager for BIND, have authored a BIND 8 Transition Guide. Additionally, Paul Vixie and Cricket Liu will host a webinar at 10:00 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007 to articulate the following:

• Reasons BIND 8 is being discontinued,
• Best practices in upgrading to BIND 9,
• How to avoid pitfalls, and
• Emerging best practices in DNS deployment and name server options.

To register for the webinar, visit: http://www.infoblox.com/images/home/bind8-emailer-final.html.

Note that all webinar participants will receive a copy of the BIND 8 Transition Guide. And, on Sept. 20, 2007, the guide can be downloaded at the following website: http://www.infoblox.com/library/dns_resources.cfm.

About Infoblox

Infoblox appliances deliver utility-grade core network services, including domain name resolution (DNS), IP address assignment and management (DHCP and IPAM), authentication (RADIUS) and related services. Infoblox solutions, which provide the essential "glue" between networks and applications, are used by over 1,800 organizations worldwide, including over 90 of the Fortune 500. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and operates in more than 30 countries. For more information, call +1.408.625.4200, email [email protected], or visit www.infoblox.com.

About ISC

Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) is a non-profit 501(c)(3), public benefit corporation with a long history of developing and maintaining the production quality BIND and DHCP Open Source software. ISC has increased its focus to include enhancing the stability of the global DNS directly through reliable F-root name server operations and ongoing operation of a DNS crisis coordination center, ISC’s OARC for DNS. ISC is also engaged in further protocol development efforts, particularly in the areas of DNS evolution and facilitating the transition to IPv6. ISC is supported by the donations of generous sponsors, program membership fees and specific fees for services. For program or donation information, please visit our website at http://www.isc.org.

Jennifer Jasper, Snr. Manager Corp. Comm.