I have read the dns tutorial and all the dns posts that i could find on here but i am still unsire about this subject. i am running fedora and am wanting to host my own websites (5). i have apache and everything already installed, but am completely lost when it comes to the authoriative dns settings/configuration. is there a guide online that can help me with this or someone that can reply and give me a general how to on the way to set it up and run it? i was told by a friend that i would have to have access to one of the parent dns servers to upload to as to spread my dns settings across the dns "tree". i am completely unfamiliar with this as i have never done anything with it before. any help is greatly appreciated.

does your lan/network have a registered hostname.

I am on a 3 machine lan, 1 running redhat.
if I wanted to set up a website I would use the routers port forwarding features to forward port 80 requests and the other know http/https
port requests to the machine running the apache server.

my lan does not have a registered domain, however, all y sites do. all i am wanting to do is use my linux machine as a router and a web host. i have apache up and working fine (with a test site accessible form the network or accessible from the internet by typing in the ip address) and the router is working flawlessly. i just need to know how to set up dns so i can host 5 sites on my linux machine and also have it to where you type in their registered domain name to access them. i am very new to dns, as you can see, so i might be making this harder that it needs to be.

You have some documentation on your system:
/usr/share/doc/bind-9.2.1/arm/Bv9ARM.html

I am not exactly sure what your doing but these might help
http://www.dyndns.org
http://www.no-ip.com

i have a static ip address also...forgot to mention that

if you are wanting to host 5 different sites on 1 machine look into Apache virtual servers or virtual hosts.

again, i have apache working properly...that is all set up right, hosts, virtual hosts, what i want to know is how i make it to where i type in a site address to access one of the sites on my server from the internet. it all has to do with the dns right? how do i set up a proper dns server so when i register a new domain or transfer one of my previous ones, i type in the name of MY dns server (i.e. ns1.mydnsservername.com, ns2.mydnsservername.com).

i found some more info online that is helping me some but i am still not completely sure how this entire things works, i will do what i can and get back if i need more help. thanks for the help so far.