Question on subdomain delegation

[Joel]

Hi,

Either I've got things setup incorrectly or I don't quite understand
how subdomain delegation is supposed to work. Or both. I'm trying to
create a subdomain in wmi.com called lpx.wmi.com. On our internal
machine we are running a very old version 8.2.2-P7. Following
instructions I found on the web I added this to the zone file

    lpx.wm.com. 43200   IN      NS      ns.lpx.wmi.com.
    ns          43200   IN      A       192.168.1.102

The named.conf file has this for wmi.com

    options {
        directory "/var/named";
        forwarders { 209.137.163.242; };
        allow-transfer { 192.168.1.102; 192.168.1.18; 192.168.1.19; };
    };

    zone "wmi.com" {
            type master;
            allow-update { key DHCP_UPDATER;
                    127.0.0.1
                    192.168.1.253;
            };
            file "wmi.com";
    };

This didn't seem to work. When I sniff packets they went to
the outside server at 209.137.163.242. The I added a new zone
in the config file. Both of these made it work but I suspect not the
way it is supposed to.

    zone "lpx.wmi.com" {
        type forward;
        forwarders { 192.168.1.102; };
    };

    zone "lpx.wmi.com" {
        type forward;
        forwarders {};
    };

I think this completely sidesteps the delegation. What do I need
to fix this? If a client asks for the address of etp10.lpx.wmi.com
should the client send the request to 192.168.1.102 or should the
primary server that got the initial request do this? I suspect
it's the client. That's not what I am seeing. My understanding is
you delegate so that the one server can get out of the picture as
quickly as possible.

It's lunchtime here and I'm off to the book store in search of
some more detailed info.

Thanks,
 - Joel