The authoritative DNS server is the final holder of the IP of the domain you are looking for. When you write a domain name in your browser, a DNS query is sent to your internet service provider (ISP). The ISP has a recursive server, which might have the needed information cached in its memory. But if the data is outdated, this recursive server need to find the IP elsewhere. It will try to find it in other recursive servers, but if it can’t, it needs to get the IP address from an authoritative DNS server.
Authoritative DNS server
Such a server is the name server, which has the original zone records. It has been configured from the original source, and it returns answers to queries that have been predetermined by the administrator.
These DNS servers are giving responses to queries just for the zones they are configured. This makes them very efficient and fast. They will not respond to recursive queries too. The requests that reach them are from Resolving name servers (resolvers) and the authoritative servers will either have the complete answer or they will pass to the name server who is responsible for it.
The authoritative servers don’t cache query results. They have data that is saved in their system.
It can be master or slave. It can store the original zones records, or a secondary server which communicates directly with the primary and copies the records directly through a DNS mechanism.
The authoritative DNS servers can be where the website is hosted or where the DNS provider is.
ClouDNS offers Authoritative DNS Servers; you can check our Managed DNS page for more information. We provide cloud-based infrastructure with 29 points of presence and advanced features like E-mail Forwarding, Web Forwarding, Dynamic DNS, Domain parking, HTTP REST API, DNS statistics, zone sharing and more. You can even protect it from DDoS attacks.
Originally published at https://www.cloudns.net/blog/
