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

Alex Hulse alexhulse at hotmail.com
Wed Jul 30 22:43:32 UTC 2003


Joseph S D Yao wrote:

Firstly, thanks to you all for providing such detailed answers and for 
pointing out the (obvious and stupidly-forgotten-by-me) root server system.
> 
> 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.
> 

So would I best best leaving my main server without a forwarder? Does 
this mean that everytime it needs a lookup it's going of half-way across 
the internet to get an answer? Or should I use a forwarder and point 
them to my ISP's DNS servers? Or is there another way of achieving this one?

Thanks

Alex


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