The recursive resolver is what clients talk to "locally". AKA a caching resolver, it's not part of your authoritative infrastructure at all. In fact, if you're using your authoritative nameservers as caching resolvers, you should stop. For most people the recursive resolver is provided by their ISP unless they elect to run their own (like I do) or to use an external one (like OpenDNS or Google's DNS). What makes them recursive is that they answer queries that aren't necessarily in their cache or known from zone files by "recursing" up the tree until it finds an answer it knows (either from root hints or previous cached lookups) then works it's way "back down" the tree to the answer.
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 10:25 AM, PLists <jkli...@ifm-services.com> wrote: > Here's your DNS noob question for the day. (I'm not a real sysadmin. I only > pretend to be when backed into a corner.) > > I've been running PowerDNS (with a MySQL backend) successfully and happily > for a couple of years now. It's really basic stuff, one A record per host > name. > > Now I'm in a situation where I need to serve up two possible IP addresses for > a certain host name. From my treks through Google, I'm assuming the following: > > 1) I simply enter multiple A records into the database, one for each IP. > 2) PowerDNS does not randomize these. [informational] > 3) Recursors are supposed to do this. [informational] > > So all I need to do, really, is enter in the multiple A records. > > > What I'm confused about is the role of the recursor. Is it already installed > as part of PowerDNS? If not, do I need to install the recursor on my name > servers? Does it take over port 53? From reading about recursors, the answer > is, "No", I think. But I'm not completely sure when one would run a recursor. > > Thanks for making something so simple and reliable. :) > > > _______________________________________________ > Pdns-users mailing list > Pdns-users@mailman.powerdns.com > http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users > _______________________________________________ Pdns-users mailing list Pdns-users@mailman.powerdns.com http://mailman.powerdns.com/mailman/listinfo/pdns-users
