I have just installed Server 2008 and am installing the role of DNS. It would seem that from all the advice on the Net, there are two ways of configuring DNS. One is to let the default go through and then in the Forwarders put in the DNS. The other is to create a New Forward lookup zone. What is the point of creating a new lookup zone? My DNS seems to be working just fine without it, or will I run into problems later on?
DNS and Forward Lookup Zones
domain-name-systemwindows-server-2008
Best Answer
These are two different things. Forwarders will tell your DNS server where to query in the event that it does not hold a copy of the zone requested. For example if you have a client that requests
google.comand you don't have a forward lookup zone for it (you shouldn't, you don't own it) then forwarders (or root hints - the default) are used to find google.com.A forward lookup zone is a set of records for a specific domain, normally that you control. If you had a LAN called internal.company.com and you wanted PCs on that LAN to find each other, you'd configure a forward lookup zone for
internal.company.comand set the computers to update their records in that zone. Or, if you ran a public website calledmyawesomesite.comyou'd hold a copy of that forward lookup zone with a Start of Authority record, some A records, maybe a MX e odd or two, etc.As you can see, they are two different things. Forward lookup zones are usually used for computers to find resources that you manage or control and forwarders (or root hints) are so that your computers can find everything else in the world.
The DNS root servers get enough traffic as it is. The proper etiquette is to use a forwarder to resolve external domain names. Usually your ISP is what people forward to, but there are plenty of other public DNS servers out there like Google DNS or Level 3's (overloaded) public resolvers.