no more recursive clients: quota reached

[Kevin Darcy]

Greg Robinson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Our internet link is down at the moment (but it won't be if you can read
> this).  We are seeing these error messages on or internal DNS server:
>
> Feb  3 14:33:07 hostname syslog: client 172.16.2.42#25930: no more recursive clients: quota reached
>
> For a whole bunch of IP addresses.  A few are DNS servers, most are
> mail or proxy servers.
>
> I can't find any reference to this in the BIND book, but my guess
> is that the DNS server has given up (quota reached) on trying to resolve
> domains for this IP address.  And I can safely ignore the message.
>
> Does this sound about right?

No, the message means that the nameserver has reached its maximum number of
*simultaneous* recursive-query requests. Any more recursive queries will have to wait to be processed.
You should only ignore the message if you care nothing about performance or the service levels you're
providing to your clients. If you care about such things, either bump up the quota, or find a way to
reduce the load, e.g. spread the query load across more servers, eliminate searchlists, or whatever.


- Kevin