What is "SERVFAIL" mean?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <002101bf6baf$b5604fa0$1e747ca4 at ns.dacom.net>,
HeePok Lee  <wind at bora.net> wrote:
>
>Hi all!!!
>
>When I use nslookup with debug mode,
>I got a below message.
>But I don't know meaning of "SERVFAIL".
>And I don't know what is difference between "SERVFAIL" and "NXDOMAIN"
>Could you explain about it?
>Thank you!!!

NXDOMAIN means that the authoritative server for the domain said that the
name doesn't exist.

SERVFAIL means that the server isn't able to answer properly for some
reason.  It can come from a caching server if it didn't get an answer from
any of the servers that the domain is delegated to.  It can also come from
a server if it notices that the domain is delegated to itself, but it
doesn't have the zone loaded and the answer isn't in its cache.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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