On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 10:16:40PM -1000, Ray Strode wrote: > This is incorrect. Normally (when Recursion Desired bit is not > set), if a server doesn't know the answer, then it will provide > suggestions for servers that are more likely to know the > answer. The idea is, the client can then ask those servers. If > RD is set, then the server goes out and queries other servers > on its own and then returns the result.
That is a good explanation of the iterative lookup. However, it is my understanding that the client does not normally perform this. I always thought it was up to the DNS servers configured on your system to ultimately perform that role. To verify, I edited /etc/resolv.conf on a few systems to point to different nameservers that I knew did not answer recursive queries from external networks and could not resolve an IP address that belonged to a third external network. (I tested on Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat, and Solaris.) Hmm.. -Vince
