Difference between secondary and slave dns servers

[Kevin Darcy]

smallpond wrote:
> voipfc wrote:
>   
>> What is the difference between secondary and slave dns servers?
>>
>> Are they synonyms or are there some subtle diffference between them?
>>     
>
> 1.4.4.2. Slave Servers
> The other authoritative servers, the slave servers (also known as
> secondary servers) ...
>
> from the bind documentation.
>   
Yeah, they're pretty much synonymous. If there's any subtle difference 
between the two, it's that "slave" is more often seen in a _relational_ 
context, i.e. one half of the "master/slave" relationship, whereas 
"secondary" is more often used when describing a whole infrastructure 
(although I have occasionally see the term "primary" being used as a 
synonym for "master").

Let's not forget, also, that a "slave" server can also serve as a 
"master" to other, downstream slaves, in a "multi-hop" architecture. So 
the use of the term "secondary" gets a little confusing at that point. 
What do we call the downstream slaves? "Tertiaries"? And the slaves 
downstream from those? Calling them all just "slaves" simplifies things.

- Kevin