No subject

Level Domains, and so on down, hierarchically.  Once you know the name
and IP address of a domain's name server, you can ask it all the
questions that you want, and it will answer you freely and happily.
Life is bliss.

A forwarder requires you to look in one particular place [or set of
places] to get your DNS information.  It can be set to require forward
"first", or forward "only".  It constrains your name server's freedom.

Why would you want to do this to your gentle name server?  There are in
fact times and circumstances in which, despite the "free love and info"
promise of a network, there IS only one source of DNS information, or a
small set of them.  In particular, if your name server is firewalled
away from the public Internet so as to preserve its integrity, then the
only place it can get external DNS information is via the firewall.  We
need to be able to tell it to forward all "non-local" queries to the
firewall.  And so we can.

For a more complete explanation, run, do not walk, to your nearest
purveyor of O'Reilly books, purchase a copy of Albitz & Liu's "DNS and
BIND", Fourth Edition <URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dns4/>, or
<URL: http://www.bookpool.com/.x/azjq2xtlx8/sm/0596001584>.  You may
also wish to see the "DNS and BIND Cookbook", also by Cricket Liu,
<URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dnsbindckbk/> or
<URL: http://www.bookpool.com/.x/azjq2xjaim/sm/0596004109>.  Read them
both before bedtime, and you will wake up with greater insight.  ;-)

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at center.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
OSIS Center Systems Support					EMT-B
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