primary and secondary DNS

[Bud Stowe]

Hi.

Whenver the primary DNS for my registered domain name is down, my
domain cannot be resolved. My provider says this is the way it works
--- the primary must be available to resolve. Well, what's the
purpose of the secondary then? Is he feeding me a line?

The other day his secondary was inaccessible via PING. My domain was
likewise unavailable then. The primary DNS appeared to be up. Why
was I unable to access my domain web server (by name) when just the
secondary was down?

thanks,
Bud Stowe

[Barry Margolin]

In article <365c4f63....@207.126.101.81>,

Bud Stowe <st...@phibred.com> wrote:
>Whenver the primary DNS for my registered domain name is down, my
>domain cannot be resolved. My provider says this is the way it works
>--- the primary must be available to resolve. Well, what's the
>purpose of the secondary then? Is he feeding me a line?

He's wrong, although it's possible for you to misconfigure your domain so
he's correct. If you don't list his servers in your NS records, the
limited NS records you supply will replace the delegation records from the
parent domain in caches, so they won't know about the secondary server.

Since you didn't say what domain you're talking about, I can't tell if this
is the situation.

>The other day his secondary was inaccessible via PING. My domain was
>likewise unavailable then. The primary DNS appeared to be up. Why
>was I unable to access my domain web server (by name) when just the
>secondary was down?

This makes no sense to me.

--
Barry Margolin, bar...@bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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