Why use Forwarders?

[Oli Comber]

Hi List,

I've had problems recently with my bind9 setup where resolution would be
very slow or not work at all when using Forwarders.

Now I'm not using them, resolution is fine and dandy and very fast.

It makes no difference to me whether I use Forwarders or not - I'm on a
small home network, no need for load balancing. 

Why would one want to use a forwarder instead of doing a lookup
directly?

Does a DNS server have to be set up in a different way to be used as a
forwarder? 

Can a server recognise that it is being used as a Forwarder and
prioritise against that?

I'm a bit confused - I don't like things that suddenly start working by
magic!

Thanks,
-Oli