What will break: "Non-authoritative answer"

[Farid Hamjavar]

You  all  ,I  am  sure,   have  come  across  the  situation
where  due  some  reasons,  syntax error  in  named.conf  or
some  other   configuration  errors  large  or   small,  got
the  "Non-authoritative  answer"  from your  DNS  server  of
the  domain   you  admin.  i.e.  you   looked  up  something
and   got  the   correct  answer   alright,  but   you  also
see   the  "Non-authoritative   answer"  message.   You  got
"Non-authoritative  answer" on  a  lookup  of something  for
which your DNS server is supposed to be authoritative!


Considering  the explanation  above,  here  is my  question.
When  in  an environment  that  provides  net services  like
mail,web,ftp,etc,etc   what  services   suffer  and   become
dysfunctional if name-server behave the way explained above?

Has anyone compiled a list? e.g. Will MTA of various flavors
(sendmail,qmail,etc)  become paralyzed  if name-server  they
point to behave the way explained above?


Thanks,
Farid
UNM