Recursive Lookup?

[Bob Helland]

So if a DNS Admin says (and I'm going to quote him...)

"...I run DNS for one of my customers.  AT&T turned off recursive, and they
were down three days..."

He's basically saying that his customer uses him for DNS resolution, and he
would then query the auth servers (I'm assuming AT&T).  If they '...turned
off recursive...'  What exactly would that mean?  They wouldn't allow him to
query their auth servers?  Or what??

TIA,
-Bob



Barry Margolin <barmar at bbnplanet.com> wrote in message
news:kGHY3.80$Nh.1281 at burlma1-snr2...
> In article <_XxY3.47$Ba2.155 at paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>,
> Bob Helland <bhelland at gte.net> wrote:
> >Can someone give me a definition of recursive lookup?  I can't quite seem
to
> >get that.
>
> You send a DNS request to a local DNS server.  That server then queries
all
> the necessary remote server (starting with the root servers and working
its
> way down the hierarchy) to get the answer for you.
>
> --
> Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
> GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
> *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to
newsgroups.
> Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the
group.
>