Question About Terminology

[John Hascall]

It seems to me that the term you are searching for is "cache-only server".

John

> Greetings listers and news-groupies,
> 
> This is a fairly long post, so if you're not interested, feel free to  
> move on.
> 
> I'm working on some reference material and I'm trying to describe the  
> various software components that make up the functioning DNS we know  
> and love. I'm having some trouble with names.
> 
> In RFC's 1034 and 1035, Paul Mockapetris wrote about resolvers and  
> name servers. But there are actually three different jobs the way  
> things are usually implemented on the modern Internet:
> 
> - The client library (+ optional caching service, e.g. DNS Client  
> Service on Windows)
> - The authoritative name server, which hosts zones and answers  
> iterative queries about them
> - The name server that performs recursion
> 
> Mr. Mockapetris' almost 20-year-old RFC's describe recursion as  
> mostly the job of the resolver, but it's a bit vague about exactly  
> what the resolver is. It's pretty clear that the thing he meant has  
> evolved into the library + optional caching service we see on client  
> machines, but the words could be argued to apply nearly as well to a  
> name server that performs recursion.
> 
> My question really is, what do we call the third part of the puzzle,  
> the go-between service that looks up names on behalf of client  
> machines? Conceptually, it's a proxy, similar to a web proxy server  
> or outbound SMTP server.
> 
> For a long time, I and some of my colleagues have been calling it a  
> "smart resolver". And we've been calling the client library a "stub  
> resolver". But I want to know if this is common usage, or if common  
> usage is still to refer to the client library as a "resolver"; in  
> which case, again, what do we call the name server that performs  
> recursion? I definitely don't want to just call it a name server,  
> because an authoritative name server is also a name server. And yes,  
> I know that both this job and authoritative name service can be done  
> by the same process (e.g. named).
> 
> I'm looking for a well-reasoned argument, based on the RFC's and on  
> the actual meanings of words, to apply reasonable and differentiated  
> names to the three components. Unless your name is Mockapetris, I'm  
> not interested in an argument based on "because I said so".
> 
> Chris Buxton
> Men & Mice
> 
>