DNS forwarding: does it actually work?

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 02:29:19PM -0800, Robert wrote:
> I am trying to get Bind 9.2.1 to FIRST forward incoming DNS requests
> to our primary NameServer before looking it up in it's own
> configuration. Is this possible? I thought it was supposed to work
> something like this, but it does not forward requests first...it looks
> them up directly anyway.
> 
> under global options I have:
> 
> options {
>         directory "/var/named";
>         pid-file "/var/run/named/named.pid";
>         transfers-in 500;
>         transfer-format many-answers;
>         forward first;
>         forwarders {
>                 69.56.134.34;
>                 };
>         };

What you want is impossible.  If a server is AUTHORITATIVE for a zone,
that means that it is the FINAL AUTHORITY - and why should it ever ask
anyone else for information on that zone?  You can't split up a zone
and have some of it here and some of it there.  You need to have
different domains, defining different zones.

What you are saying above is: for all NON-LOCAL queries, first try
forwarding to 69.56.134.34; but if that server is not available, then
use regular DNS.  This is rarely optimal unless you incur a low network
penalty for accessing that one server, but a high network penalty for
accessing anything else [and that server's connection is also somehat
iffy].

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at center.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
OSIS Center Systems Support					EMT-B
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