forwarders without a forwarders directive

[Dave Sparro]

On 29 Jan 2006 08:30:13 -0800, rsesnaski at yahoo.com <rsesnaski at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I took over administration at a new company and for the life of me
> I can't see how their external addresses (www.google.com) resolv
> without a named.conf fowarders directive. Is there something I missing
> or some sort of fall back position to a default gateway?

DNS forwarders should be the exception, not the rule.  The best way
for a caching DNS server to get it's information from the Internet is
through a series of iterative queries following the chain of
delegation from the root to the authoritative servers for the domain
in question.  For example :

; <<>> DiG 9.2.2 <<>> +trac www.google.com
;; global options:  printcmd
.                       227864  IN      NS      I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.                       227864  IN      NS      H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 276 bytes from 192.168.1.20#53(192.168.1.20) in 5 ms

com.                    172800  IN      NS      K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      D.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      H.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com.                    172800  IN      NS      J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 504 bytes from 192.36.148.17#53(I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET) in 7 ms

google.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns1.google.com.
google.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns2.google.com.
google.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns3.google.com.
google.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns4.google.com.
;; Received 168 bytes from 192.52.178.30#53(K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET) in 123 ms

www.google.com.         900     IN      CNAME   www.l.google.com.
l.google.com.           86400   IN      NS      a.l.google.com.
l.google.com.           86400   IN      NS      b.l.google.com.
l.google.com.           86400   IN      NS      c.l.google.com.
l.google.com.           86400   IN      NS      d.l.google.com.
l.google.com.           86400   IN      NS      e.l.google.com.
l.google.com.           86400   IN      NS      g.l.google.com.
;; Received 244 bytes from 216.239.32.10#53(ns1.google.com) in 84 ms

--
Dave
http://dns.thesparros.com/