I'm just curious I was thinking about buying a server to host our files on, but how do I go about getting the name server or can I just set my registrar to automatically redirect to the server IP or will I need a nameserver if so where do I get one at?
I beleive you can create an host on any domain you own at your registrar, and associate that ip with your hostname. Let say you associate ip : 68.12.34.123 to server.domain.com Whenever you ask for server.domain.com it should point to this ip.
It might be cheaper to lease a complete webserver, like a VPS, then having a good dedicated connection at home/office. The main issues will be speed and reliability.
Well the problem is we don't really want people hosting our files specially after what happen the other day with a hosting company we was dealing with.
In another thread you were talking about a computer for hosting. Do you think your files will be more safe on an old pc with a single hardrive ? Those VPS, are often install in RAID, mirror-strip, which pretty much render the chane of dataloss to nil. Plus, you could always buy a an offsite backup dataspace like with http://www.bqbackup.com. It is pretty cheap and safe.
If you have to ask whether you need a nameserver or not, then you probably don't. Correctly configuring DNS and securing it against cache poisoning, distributed attacks etc. isn't simple and most registrars or hosting companies already provide you with this service without additional charges. Best to go with that. In case you still want to do this, firstly read up on BIND and how DNS works. Here are a few links that may help: http://www.bind9.net/manuals http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/doc/bind9/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System