BIND and NSD

[Justin]

While searching information about DNS servers I came across a concept that is all new to me. Can anyone please tell me:-
What are BIND and NSD?
What is the difference between BIND and NSD?
With security point of view which is considered to be more secure?

[Cristiano]

Hello Justin,

Name Server Daemon (NSD) is an authoritative only, high performance, open source software for Domain Name System. NSD has been designed from scratch specifically as an authoritative name server. NSD was developed by NLnet Labs of Amsterdam in cooperation with the RIPE. NSD uses the standard TCP/UDP port 53 and has the same zone file format at BIND.

BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain OR named) is an implementation of DNS protocols which serves the request on the port 53 especiallu on Unix like systems. It contains all of the software needed both to ask name service questions and to answer such questions.

The key features are
1. A Domain Name System server :: This is a named program, which answers the question sent to.
2. A Domain Name System "resolver library" :: It is a set of components that a programmer can add to a software being developed, which will give the ability for the software to resolve names.
3. Software tools for testing servers :: These are the testing tools, just in case you need to test the configuration to make sure they are working fine.

Advantage to switch over NSD is it's capability to process requests with less memory limits which is an advantage to the VPSes running with less memory limits. However, BIND supports DNS Caching, Recursion, ACL and Split Horizon (implementation to provide different sets of DNS information, usually a source address of DNS request), rndc flush (remote name daemon control) & multiprocessor support. NSD does not work with cPanel DNS clustering.

For more information on NSD you can refer NSD