Bind 9 resolver timeout and ncache behaviour

[Nick Garfield]

Dear fellow bind users,

BIND makes a very useful local caching named, especially when configured
with forward only;

However,  I have not been able to find how to configure timeouts/retries
as I can on the resolver, nor have I been able to find out what bind 9
does when a request fails due to a timeout.

Thus my questions are simple:

(1) How long is the timeout period of a forwarded request?
(2) Are there any retries?
(3) If a query is timed out from all servers in the forwarders list is
the failed request then marked down as an error and stored in the
negative cache?  If so, for how long?
(4) The client's resolver probably has a longer timeout than the caching
named.  When the caching named has a timeout what does the caching named
return to the client's resolver - nothing or an error message?

Thank you in advance to anyone who has the time and patience to reply
:-)

Regards,

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Dr. Nick Garfield
IT/CS Group
CERN
CH-1211 Geneve 23
Switzerland

T: +41 22 767 4533
M: +41 76 487 3282
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