DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

Name Servers to Query

This section discusses how to tell your resolver which name servers to query. By default, the resolver looks for a name server running on the local host, which is why we could use nslookup on terminator and wormhole right after we configured their name servers. You can, however, instruct the resolver to look to another host for name service. This configuration is sometimes called a DNS client.

The DNS server addresses, in order of use field (see Figure 6-7) tells the resolver the IP addresses of the name server(s) to query. What’s potentially confusing is that the information in this field is linked to the Use the following DNS server addresses field in the main TCP/IP properties window (see Figure 6-6). You can specify as many name servers as you want^[6] in the DNS server addresses, in order of use field. As with the list of DNS suffixes in Figure 6-8, the Add, Edit, and Remove buttons have the expected effect. You can also use the Up and Down arrows to reorder the list of addresses. The first two addresses show up as the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server^[7] on the main TCP/IP properties window. Likewise, changes made to the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server fields are reflected in this list.

The settings in Figure 6-7 instruct the resolver to send queries to the name servers running at IP addresses 192.249.249.3 and 192.249.249.1. Typically, you configure the resolvers on your hosts to query your own name servers, but you can configure ...