Search Again: Re: Primary vs. Secondary From: Global Homes Webmaster Date: Wednesday, May 3, 2000 Time: 5:12:24 pm On 05/03/00 at 16:21, Joe LeBlanc wrote: > I always thought that my Secondary DNS server would only get use if the > Primary one is down, or not available. Yet it gets as much traffic as the > Primary. Is this normal? and if not, any reason that the Secondary one is > getting hit so hard? Thanks. It's rather unfortunate that Network Solutions, in their infinite wisdom, chose to use the terms 'primary' and 'secondary' in their registration forms. It leads to no end of confusion. As far as resolving DNS queries is concerned, there's no difference between 'primary' and 'secondary' name servers. Which is to say that, in this context, the terms 'primary' and 'secondary' do not imply that one is the 'main' server and the other is a 'back-up' server. There's no provision in the DNS database (i.e. in NS records) for differentiating between primary and secondary servers, so all of the servers with authority for a given domain are treated as peers. In fact, there is really no way to guarantee that NS records will even be returned in any particular order in response to queries. All name servers listed in NS records for a domain should expect to see a roughly equal number of requests for the domain. (Most resolvers will tend use the server that responds fastest, but you should still expect all of your name servers to get some significant share of the traffic.) The only real difference between a 'primary' and 'secondary' name server is _how_ they get the data for the domains for which they have authority. A 'primary' server gets its data from a local file. A 'secondary' server gets its data through a 'zone transfer' from another server (usually, but not necessarily, a primary server). That's the entire difference. Any given name server can be a 'primary' server for some domains and a 'secondary' server for other domains. An alternative, and much less confusing, terminology is to call them 'master' and 'slave' servers (the terminology that BIND 8.x uses). Christopher Bort

Messages In This Thread: Primary vs. Secondary by Joe LeBlanc on May 3, 2000 at 4:21:46 pm Re: Primary vs. Secondary by Mia''s Virtual Post Office on May 3, 2000 at 4:39:59 pm Re: Primary vs. Secondary by Global Homes Webmaster on May 3, 2000 at 5:12:24 pm Re: Primary vs. Secondary by Peter Nilsson on May 4, 2000 at 1:56:04 am Re: Primary vs. Secondary by Peter Lalor on May 7, 2000 at 11:56:56 am Re: Primary vs. Secondary by Men & Mice Support on May 7, 2000 at 12:55:36 pm