Steve Litt <[email protected]> wrote:

>> Unless you have just one device on your network, then you should not
>> be running a recursive resolver on each of them - that's just being
>> antisocial to the internet.
> 
> What would happen in djbdns' dnscache if you put your LAN's resolver at
> the head of the list of root DNS servers? Is there any way of telling
> dnscache "use this root server if at all possible?"

No experience with either of those.

> My idea, if it's possible, would be a way to have the office-wide
> caching and world resource conservation of a LAN level resolver, but
> still have a complete and capable host resolver.

I suspect the problem with any of the software options is getting something to 
do "if the resolver exists then use it, otherwise do your own resolving" which 
is necessary for a nomadic machine - unless you do some scripting to munge the 
setup each time you move networks.

With Bind, a simple (from memory) "forwarder blah" will tell it that anything 
it can't resolve locally should be sent to blah. If blah is offline then you'll 
get no resolving of anything but locally defined zones, and if blah is online 
then you'll get stuff resolved - but there'll be two levels of caching (local 
and on blah*).

* assuming, as would be sensible, that blah does caching on anything it 
resolves.

I do know some Windows people use an "implementation specific undocumented 
feature" whereby Windows will consult the resolvers you specify in order. This 
sort of works for split horizon stuff in that they can list an internal 
(non-recursive) server first, and external ones after that. AIUI it works fine 
as long as the internal server(s) is never offline - because if it's ever not 
available, clients move it internally to the bottom of the list and the system 
breaks :-)

My approach is that, with a small number of special case exceptions, a network 
should provide a reliable caching resolver for use by devices on that network - 
and devices on that network should use it. Most of the arguments for a local 
resolver boil down to "provided service isn't reliable" to which the correct 
answer is "well then, fix it !"


Oh yes, and another reason for ISPs to provide resolvers for their customer's 
to use - that provides caching across many many customers - potentially 
hundreds of thousands of customers, with potentially millions of devices. 
That's a lot of round trips removed from the system.

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