Can someone explain forwarders and why I don't need them?

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 08:52:57PM +0100, Alex Hulse wrote:
> I always used to think that in order for a named installed to work 
> right, it'd need a forwarder to work correctly - ie, point it to the 
> upstream DNS.
> 
> I noticed in this group (when searching for the answer to something else 
> entirely) that you didn't need one. Odd, I thought, and removed it to 
> see what'd happen. Suddenly I get much faster DNS. Huh?
> 
> However, if I removed it from a machine one firewall behind that (we 
> have two networks that go Internet --dsl router-->network 1--firewall 
> linux-->network 2) ie in network 2, that one ground to a halt, so I put 
> it back and it worked fine again.
> 
> Really odd stuff! Any ideas?

Normally, with a name server running on the public Internet, you will
not need any forwarders.  You are born knowing the Root of All Names.