DNS forwarding: does it actually work?

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 03:16:31PM -0800, Robert Abbate wrote:
> I appreciate all the help received on this issue.
> Before I try to setup a slave again, can anyone tell
> me what this is for, and if anyone actually uses it in
> their config?:
> 
> options {
>       ....
>         forward first;
>         forwarders {
>                 12.34.56.78;
>                 };
>         };
>      ....
> }
> 
> From what I can tell, it is supposed to forward
> queries to that IP first before looking them up
> directly...but I may be totally off.

I told you in my first message, and you are somewhat off.

For NON-LOCAL queries, it tries to forward to that IP / those IPs.  If
it gets no response, THEN it uses the normal DNS distributed lookup
mechanism [which is not what I would have called "directly", but that
might have been what you were thinking].  However, if a forward gets it
a NEGATIVE response ["I know about that zone, and there is no such
value in it"], it stops and does not do the normal DNS distributed
lookup.

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at center.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
OSIS Center Systems Support					EMT-B
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
   This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.