Question about resolving dns upwards in the namespace

royal

I'm studying 70-291 right now but have a question about something works in windows 2000 server. Basically, I've been reading about dns and from my study materials, it says in Windows server 2003, in order to resolve upwards in the namespace you add a conditional forwarder. The thing is, conditional forwarding is a windows server 2003 only feature. How does this work in windows 2000 server? I know I don't "need" to know this for the windows server 2003 70-291 exam, but I want to know for the benefit of having the knowledge. Thanks in advance.

Danman32

I suppose you could forward unconditionally to the parent DNS serer and hope that THAT server could forward to the internet. You could end up in a resolving loop I suppose by doing this.

Or add the parent zone as a secondary to that server.

Danman32

You could do an unconditional forwarder, hoping you don't end up in a resolution loop if misconfigured, or you can add secondary zones to your local DNS server(s). Unfortunately for W2K, AD integrated zones only work within the confines of an AD domain. At least that's what I have found in my experiments, though I could have done something wrong.

Slowhand

I had the same question when I was studying for the 70-291, since I'd heard that Windows 2000 didn't handle forwarding the same way. It's been about six months, give or take, and I haven't found an answer. If anyone has a link to a TechNet article on this, or something concrete, I'd love to find out how it works.

Danman32

Again, it's really simple. W2K has unconditional forwarding. If the DNS server can't resolve from its own records (defined zones or cache), then it will forward the request to the forwarder if enabled and defined. The intent was to be able to resolve internet domain names when your AD domain is not part of the internet domain hierarchy.

With 2003, you can forward requests for specific domains, as well as a default forwarder.