BECOSACER, Jayson J.

ECEng – 5A Data Communications July 24, 2018

LABORATORY EXERCISE NO. 3

DNS Client:

A. Viewing DHCP Client and DNS Client Status

For this part of the laboratory activity we will try to look at the DHCP (Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol) Client and DNS (Domain Name System) Client status on both Services
control panel and on the command prompt. The Services control panel provides a much easier
access to the features and status of both DHCP Client and DNS Client. On the other hand, the
command prompt can provide a summary of important details about the DHCP Client and DNS
Client in one look.

Figure 1. Query on Running Services using Command Prompt

 Figure 1 provides a query of all running services using sc query command. Some of the details that
we can see in the query are the SERVICE_NAME, DISPLAY_NAME, TYPE, and STATE. To be more specific in
looking for a particular service, let say the DHCP Client service, we can enter sc query dhcp to display the
status of the DHCP Client service only as show in figure 2. If you want to check for the status of the DNS
Client service, then we can enter sc query dnscache as shown in figure 3.

Figure 2. Specific Query for DHCP Client Service

Figure 3. Specific Query for DNS Client Service

The DHCP Client service can also be started or stopped using the command prompt.
Unfortunately, the command sc stop dhcp and even net stop Dhcp were able to stop the DHCP Client
service. The message “A stop control has been sent to a service that other running services are dependent
on.” keeps appearing as a response to the sc stop dhcp command while the net stop Dhcp command is
being denied by the system. Keep in mind that if we were able to stop the DHCP Client service, there is a
possibility that some errors might occur and connection might be lost due to the fact that the system
cannot automatically assign an IP address for transaction of data that may lead to troubles like having the
same IP address.
B. Using the DNS Command-Line Program Nslookup

For the second part of the laboratory activity, we will take a closer look on the connection
between IP addresses and domain names as we use the nslookup command. As a first example,
we try to use nslookup command to check the IP address of www.course.com. In figure 4, we can
that the command prompt displays the server where the computer is connected together with
the IP address of 192.168.8.1 which is, in fact, the IP address of my pocket wifi. After the request
was made, a response was received which also contains the domain name of the site and its IP
address.

Figure 4. Using Nslookup Command to Determine the IP Address of a Website

Some domain names have more than one IP address like google.com. We can check it
using the nslookup command by entering www.google.com and the IP addresses will show up as
shown in figure 5. Some of the DNS request timed out due to some failures in the internet
connection.

Figure 5. Using Nslookup Command to Determine the IP Addresses of a google.com

 We can also have an interactive nslookup search of different domain names to make it
easier for us. We can also do a reverse lookup by typing 198.60.123.100.
 For this laboratory activity we were able to identify what is the purpose of DHCP Client and DNS
Client services through some interactive exercise in checking each client’s status. DHCP Client service
provides unique addressing, which is the IP address, to different devices to ensure that there is unique
identifier and that connections and communications in a form can be error-free. The DNS Client service
also provides us with the domain name and the IP address of both our computer and the server that we
want to check. Through these hands-on activities we can verify that, at some level, the data exchange
happening on the Internet is based on a systematic request-and-response relationship of different devices
being governed by protocols to ensure reliable and error-free connection. We can say that the information
is being sent or delivered can be traced using the given IP addresses of the source and destination of the
data.

By this, we can say that both services are highly important in organizing the sending and receiving
of data for they ensure the quality of the connection and take care of minimizing error while maximizing
the time for request and/or response. After all, protocols are meant to be strictly followed to have a stable
and organized network system.