Re: [cobalt-users] RAQ3 as primary AND secondary DNS ??

["Gerald Waugh" <gerald@xxxxxxxxx>]

>On Sunday, May 28, 2000 12:41 AM Brent Sims <brent@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

> On Sat, 27 May 2000, Gerald Waugh so wrote:
>
> } Another point is that although having many nameservers sounds good, it takes
> } something like 25 seconds for a browser request for a name server to time
out
> } (then look for second server), how many of these timeouts is the user going
to
> } wait for. Therefore, any more than two is probably overkill, how many users
are
> } going to wait minutes for a site (name server) to be found?
>
> While this is indeed true, there's a whole lot more to this
> than meets the eye. Once one gets a primary and a secondard name
> server running the rules change a bit. At this point one can
> easily create a network of name servers and thus lighten the load on
> the primary and secondary name servers and Bind provides the
> functionality to do just this. All one has to do is, after making
> arrangements for additional name servers, add the following to their
> name servers named.conf file:
>
> forward first;
> forwarders {
> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
> etc...
> }
>
> Using forwarders lightens the load on the primary name
> servers and increases response times by spreading the traffic over a
> hierarchy  - a network - of name servers. For more information check
> out the DNS-HOWTO:
>
> http://webokay.com/help/howto/DNS-HOWTO-html/DNS-HOWTO-3.html
> Peace be with you,
> Brent

Brent,
I am not sure I understand, the reference URL points to a document topic
"caching nameservers". If the user visited your site previously and the URL is
in his cache then you are "home free", but if it's not in his cache then a
normal search for the URL must proceed. (is this correct?)
A quotation from the document follows;
"If a client tries to look up sunsite.unc.edu,
sunsite.unc.edu.subdomain.your-domain.edu is tried first (yes, it's silly, but
that's the way it works), then sunsite.unc.edu.your-domain.edu, and finally
sunsite.unc.edu. You may not want to put in too many domains in the search line,
it takes time to search them all.
I definitely could be wrong about this, if so please provide some illumination.
Also, I don't understand how this can lighten the load on the nameservers, other
than the fact that the look-up, may be, in the users cache. And, the onus is on
the user, not the nameservers or the Web Server.
Gerald