Some questions about bind

Barry Margolin barmar at alum.mit.edu
Mon May 3 19:53:12 UTC 2004


In article <c76115$17dd$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
 brentbolin at hotmail.com (Brent Bolin) wrote:

> Hello All,
> 
> 1. When a domain has miltiple name servers listed(whois) what name
> server does it use.  Does it do round-robin or does it use the first
> listed name server ?

Client servers keep track of the response times of the servers, and use 
the one with the best times.  If there are several servers with similar 
response times, they'll be chosen essentially randomly.

The order of the nameserver listing is irrelevant.  The only records 
that impose any kind of priority ordering are the ones that have an 
explicit priority value in the record, e.g. MX records.

> 2. If someone is trying to get to a name address and the first name
> server does not have it listed will bind try the next authoritative
> name server for that domain or does it stop at the first name server ?

Failover only occurs when a server doesn't respond.  As long as the 
server responds authoritatively, its answer will be used.  If it says 
the name doesn't exist, it will be believed.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***


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