Best Practices for Authoritative Servers

[Chris Buxton]

A server is authoritative for a zone if it has a complete, non-cached  
copy of the zone. In other words, if it is master or slave for that  
zone, and if the zone loads correctly, then it is authoritative. This  
is indicated by the 'aa' flag in a response from the server.

It does not matter whether any NS record in the zone refers to the  
server by name. In fact, a name server doesn't necessarily know its  
own name(s), nor does it normally need to do so. I don't believe the  
BIND name server makes any attempt to figure out a name for its host  
machine, for example.

- --

To the original poster, I have to say, the question is unclear. In  
what way are you including name servers in the zone definitions? What  
zone definitions? It is always clearest to other people when  
discussing BIND if you use standard BIND terminology, even if that  
terminology does not come naturally to you. Therefore, you might  
discuss configuration items such as a "zone statement", a "masters  
substatement inside a slave zone statement", a zone's "apex  
records" (the records in the zone that have the same name as the zone  
itself - this one's not too commonly used, I think), etc.

Chris Buxton
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On Jan 31, 2008, at 12:39 PM, John Wobus wrote:

> This brings to mind a point I am confused about.  What causes bind9
> to mark a query-response as authoritative?  Is it sufficient that the
> data come from a zone configured in this nameserver to be either
> master or slave?  Or, does it matter if there exists an NS record that
> points
> at the nameserver itself?  The specific point is whether, you can
> run a caching server also that transfers some select zones, yet answer
> queries for names in these zones as if they were cached.
>
> I couldn't find a quick answer with google or any of my books.
>
> John
>
> On Jan 31, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Baird, Josh wrote:
>
>> I currently have three authoritative (non-recursive) internal
>> nameservers (these servers are listed in the NS RRset for all of my
>> internal domains).  I also have several resolving/caching servers  
>> which
>> hold the slave zones for these authoritative servers.  On these
>> resolving servers, the zone definitions only define one of the three
>> authoritative servers.  Would it be best to include all three
>> authoritative servers in the zone definitions for the slaves?  What
>> benefit would I gain?  Is there even a point in having three
>> authoritative servers, when only one is listed in the zone  
>> definitions
>> for the slaves?
>>
>>
>> I appreciate any input.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>>
>> Josh
>>
>>
>>
>
>