Stub zones vs. Conditional Forwarding

petedude

I see a lot of practice questions that could go either way. . . anyone have a good simple summary as to when to use which?

Essendon

A stub zone has very few records in it so there is hardly any zone transfer traffic, useful when you want to limit WAN traffic. Also only the information absolutely required for name resolution is given out, it's a secure method in that sense. Since they are AD integrated, dont need to manually update them on all your servers. Name resolution is more efficient since it directly speaks with the server in the stub, reducing the number of hops. If the server in the record cannot be contacted, the querying server uses its root hints.

Conditional forwarding is generally used in partnership organisations. Say two companies have merged, a conditional forwarders help resolve inter-org names without having to go out to the Internet. But conditional forwaders are updated manually, while stubs are dynamic.

petedude

Thanks, that helps.