DNS Master File Format
DNS servers answer queries from clients by sending reply messages containing RRs. You have already seen in this chapter the binary message formats used to encode these RRs. These message formats are great for transmitted messages, because they are compact and efficient. Computers have no problem reading fields very quickly and knowing how to interpret a particular string of ones and zeros.
Humans, on the other hand, don't deal well with cryptic codes in binary. Before an RR can be provided by a server, it is necessary for a human administrator to tell the server what those records are and what information they contain. To make this job easier, DNS includes a special text representation for zones and RRs. Administrators edit ...
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