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The Domain Name Service (DNS) protocol is what applications use
to resolve domain names into Internet addresses, as well as provide
other information about a domain, such as the name of the mail
servers which are responsible for receiving e-mail for users in
that domain. All of the SocketTools components provide basic domain
name resolution functionality, but the Domain Name Services control
gives an application direct control over what servers are queried,
the amount of time spent waiting for a response and the type of
information that is returned.
The following properties, methods and events are available for
use by your application:
Initialize
Initialize the control and load the Windows Sockets library for the
current process. This method is normally not used if the control is
placed on a form in languages such as Visual Basic. However, if the
control is being created dynamically using a function similar to
CreateObject, then the application must call this method to
initialize the component before setting any properties or calling
any other methods in the control.
Reset
Reset the internal state of the control and re-initialize the
component to use the default nameserver configuration for the local
host. This can be useful if your application wishes to discard any
settings made by a user and return to using the local system
configuration.
Uninitialize
Unload the Windows Sockets library and release any resources that
have been allocated for the current process. This is the last
method call that the application should make prior to terminating.
This is only necessary if the application has previously called the
Initialize method.
Host Tables
When resolving a host name or IP address, the library will first
search the local system's host table, a file that is used to map
host names to addresses. On Windows 95/98 and Windows Me, if the
file exists it is usually found in C:\Windows\hosts. On Windows NT
and later versions, it is found in
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Note that the file does not
have an extension.
HostFile
Return the full path of the file that contains the default host
table for the local system. This can be useful if you wish to
temporarily switch between the default host file and another host
file specific to your application.
Host Name Resolution
The control can be used to resolve host names into IP addresses,
as well as perform reverse DNS lookups converting IP addresses into
the host names that are assigned to them. The control will search
the local system's host table first, and then perform a nameserver
query if required.
HostAddress
A property which returns the IP address of the host name specified
in the HostName property. Setting this property to an IP address
will cause the control to perform a reverse DNS lookup to attempt
to determine the name of the host that was assigned that address.
If successful, the host name for the specified IP address can be
determined by reading the value of the HostName property.
HostName
A property which returns the name of the host associated with the
IP address specified in the HostAddress property. Setting this
property to a host name will cause the control to perform a DNS
lookup to determine the IP address of that host. If succesful, the
IP address for the host can be determined by reading the value of
the HostAddress property.
Resolve
A method which resolves a host name into an IP address, returned as
a string in dotted notation. The control first checks the system's
local host table, and if the name is not found there, it will
perform a nameserver query for the A (address) record for that
host.
Query
Perform a general nameserver query for a specific record type. This
method can be used to perform queries for the common record types
such as A and PTR records, as well as for other record types such
as TXT (text) records. Refer to the Technical Reference for more
information about the specific types of records that can be
returned.
Mail Exchange Records
When a system needs to deliver a mail message to someone, it
needs to determine what server is responsible for accepting mail
for that user. This is done by looking up the mail exchange (MX)
record for the domain. For example, if a message was addressed to
joe@bigcorp.com, to determine the name of the mail server that
would accept mail for that recipient, you would perform an MX
record query against the domain bigcorp.com. A domain may have more
than one mail server, in which case multiple MX records will be
returned.
MailExchange
A property array which returns the mail exchanges for the domain
specified in the HostName property. This is a zero-based array,
with the maximum number of entries returned by the MailExchanges
property
Advanced Properties
In addition to providing host name and IP address resolution,
the control can be used to perform advanced queries for other types
of records.
HostInfo
Return additional information about the specified host name. If the
name server has been configured to provide host information for the
domain, this method will return that data. Typically it is used to
indicate what hardware and operating system the host uses.
HostServices
Return information about the UDP and TCP based services that the
host provides. If defined, this will return a list of service names
such as "ftp" and "http". Note that your application should not
depend on this information to be a definitive list of what services
a remote host provides.
NameServer
A property array which can be used to return the current
nameservers that are configured for the local host, or the values
can be changed to specify new nameservers. The maximum number of
nameservers that can be configured for each instance of the control
is four.
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