primary&secondary

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark E Drummond <drummond-m at rmc.ca> writes:

    Mark> I would not consider a secondary to be redundant ... not
    Mark> when every DNS request still goes to the dead primary
    Mark> (dependant on your list of resolvers of course) and
    Mark> therefore takes ~60secs to time out before "failing over"
    Mark> ... that's not fail over, that's failure.

There is no distinction between "primary" and "secondary" - the
current terminology is master and slave - when it comes to
resolving. A name server just follows the NS records. It can't tell by
looking at them if the listed servers are master or slave. As for the
timeout problem, you just make sure that the three name servers that
are entered in resolv.conf are always up. Resolver clients just fire a
query at the first server in that list - it doesn't necessarily have
to be master or slave for anything - and leave it to get the answer.
That server will traverse the name space, ignoring any dead servers
along the way and eventually return an answer to the resolver tht made
the initial query. That resolver has no way of telling how the name
server got that answer.