Time outs when using forwarders

Jim Reid jim at rfc1035.com
Tue Dec 28 17:00:06 UTC 2004


>>>>> "Kenneth" == Kenneth Mason <KMASON at MAIL.NYSED.GOV> writes:

    Kenneth> I am considering changing my internal DNS servers so that
    Kenneth> they no longer use the root hints file and instead
    Kenneth> forward to a couple of caching only servers that do use
    Kenneth> the root hints file.

Reconsider. What do you hope to achieve by setting up such a broken
DNS configuration? Aside from making your setup more brittle and hard
to administer of course....

    Kenneth> I have been testing this configuration and am
    Kenneth> experiencing a significant number of resolution timeouts.

So stop using forwarding.

    Kenneth> Can anyone offer a suggestion regarding the number of a
    Kenneth> resolution timeouts?

Not on the information you've given. Short of hacking the source code
and recompiling, there's usually no way for a stub resolver to change
the timeout on DNS queries. If your problem is caused by DNS timeouts,
messing about with forwarding won't help. At best, that would paper
over the cracks. You should do a root cause analysis and fix the
underlying problem, eg a lossy internet link or some firewall/router
that dislikes DNS packets.



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