Forwarding-Only Server

A forwarding-only server does not actually handle any queries, but instead just for-wards them to the correct location. This might be something you see if you work for an ISP that handles thousands of requests at a time. Forwarding-only servers are actually the easiest to set up because they require almost no configuration. In the named.conf file, let’s set up the following section:

options {
    directory “/var/named”;
    fowarders { 172.168.1.0/24; forward first; };
};

This section sends all queries to the first DNS server in the match-list and to the root DNS servers if no match is made. You also can specify forward only to check only the match-list servers and no root DNS server. If you don’t include the directive, it defaults to forward first . If you are going to allow the query of root DNS servers, you must have the /var/named/named.ca file, which contains a list of root DNS servers. This is the entire setup required for a forwarding-only DNS server.