Testout DNS question - Confused??

MattMcNabb

I recently had a question in that left me confused. It states that you have a split DNS and you want to configure your internal DNS never to send queries for local resources to Internet name servers. Any requests for Internet resources are to go through your public DNS servers. The answer claims that you should configure a root zone on your internal name server and then set up conditional forwarding to your public server for all top level domains. My question is, aren't root zones and conditional forwarding mutually exclusive? If I create a root zone I can no longer configure the forwarders tab, it is grayed out. Furthermore it seems silly to configure conditional forwarding to all top level domains. There are dozens of them (or more)! Can't you just configure conditional forwarding to all other domains and leave it at that (no root zone)? Any help here is much appreciated as I thought I knew DNS well for the 291 but some of my 293 study material seems contradictory.

Devilsbane

You can have both root hints and forwarders configured if thats what you are asking. However great care should be taken when determining which DNS servers have root hints configured. You really only want 1 DNS server forwarding to the internet. Maybe 2 or 3 if you want to build some redundancy in, but certainly not all of them.

dynamik

Devilsbane wrote: »

You can have both root hints and forwarders configured if thats what you are asking.

He's not asking about root hints. When you configure a root zone (.), that is the root.

I think that's a terrible question; I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I can't remember, can you still setup forwarders even though conditional forwarders is disabled? I'm not in a place where I can test it either. Their solution of setting up a forwarder for each TLD is ridiculous and doesn't seem to add anything over simply using forwarders. I think adding a root zone is excessive and redundant even if it is technically possible.

MattMcNabb

Thanks for the replies. At least I'm not the only one who thinks this is a bad question. It's funny how many bad ones you get with these practice test apps. I won't even mention Readiness Review. I don't think they even proofread their tests. Self-Test has always been pretty good to me, though. I'll probably pick up their test for the 293 before I schedule.

Technito

MattMcNabb wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. At least I'm not the only one who thinks this is a bad question. It's funny how many bad ones you get with these practice test apps. I won't even mention Readiness Review. I don't think they even proofread their tests. Self-Test has always been pretty good to me, though. I'll probably pick up their test for the 293 before I schedule.

Yeah Selftest is what I use and they are usually pretty good and accurate as far as information goes. But I have run across a few discrepancies and contradictions with Selftest. And now that I think about it, it was relating to DNS . But yeah Readiness Review, don't even get me started lol. I've thrown away my RR cd's they're that bad. And there's so many typos and mistakes in the MS Press books. I wonder have they ever heard of Word spell check?