[TriLUG] DNS

[Jon Carnes]

On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 08:30, Magnus Hedemark wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Chris MacLeod wrote:
> 
> > Kinda an odd question but are these boxes on Road Runner at home?
> > 
> > I didn't see anywhere in your config where you listed your forwarders.
> 
> You don't need forwarders.  Especially not if you're on an ISP with 
> known spotty DNS service.  Just set yourself up as a caching server and go 
> straight to authoritative sources, bypassing the RR servers.
> 
> --Magnus

I don't think that is good advice.

Admittedly this will give you better DNS service (if your ISP's sucks),
but it also puts a bigger load on the root name servers.  If every
household by-passed their ISP DNS servers and used the root ones instead
that would create a larger load on those servers than they are designed
for.
If that type of load continues to grow I wouldn't be surprised to see
the root name servers limit access to only registered ISP's. 

DNS works great in a distributed model, and RoadRunners DNS is really
good. I find that most of my hits against their DNS are already cached.
Ben and his crew have done a lot over the past year to make all of
RoadRunners services better.

I recommend that you do use your ISP's DNS *and* that you cache your
hits locally.  That will give you a nice performance boost - even on a
network with crappy DNS service.

I whole-heartedly agree with Magnus (Chris) on the use of vi.  Vi rocks!
I wouldn't edit my Named files with any other editor :-)

Good Luck - Jon Carnes