Questions[authoritative](server)

I started recently to learn about DNS, and I got stuck when using dig command in Linux. More exactly, I'd like to see the authoritative name servers (their names or IP addresses) that hold the answers to my DNS queries and I don't know how. As you probably already know, the dig's command output has 5 sections: HEADER, QUERY, ANSWER, AUTHORITY and ADDITIONAL. The last 3 include resource records found in the reply to the DNS request send by dig. The one that interests me is the AUTHORITY section which normally should show resource records of type NS (name server) that provide information about the authoritative name servers from which the answer to the initial query is retrieved. The authoritative servers are of course different from the cache servers that can improve efficiency.

Now, my problem is that every time I call dig the answer doesn't contain any AUTHORITY records. It is possible I don't know the proper options or some other issue which I'm not aware of may occur. What could be the reasons for not getting any authority answer and what should be done in order to get it? I would put an image of the terminal but I don`t have yet 10 reputation, but the question remains.

I see that almost all registered domains have at least two authoritative name servers configured (and for most of them, exactly two), and that using two servers provides redundancy against any kind of server failure. Technically there's no restriction on number of auth NS servers, so a single NS also works.

However, for some zones, there are already multiple addresses for one server configured, like ns1.qq.com (4 IPv4 addresses, auth NS for qq.com.). And for some other zones, the name servers are distributed using techniques like anycast, like ns3.cloudflare.com (one anycast IPv4 and one anycast IPv6).

In those cases, why would one still configure multiple authoritative name servers for a zone, when one NS entry can already provide redundancy against physical server failure?

For a few weeks now I've tried configuring BIND Server on my Pfsense Router as an authoritative DNS Server.

I own a domain bought from RoTLD, I've set my nameservers to my external static ip, and they have had enough time to propagate. Problem is that I have no idea how to configure the BIND package on Pfsense, and I may not open the firewall correctly for it. The errors I am getting are because the nameservers don't respond. I would like for the domain to respond with my external ip address as a starting point.

Any help would be highly appreciated, as I am unable to find anything really relevant to the Pfsense's way of using the BIND plugin. To my understanding I have to configure the plugin from the UI, because any changes written to the plugin's files will be re-written if I change anything in the UI.

This is my first post on Server Fault, and I don't know if I have given enough information on my problem...

Thank you, Andrew

I am trying to implement a dynamic dns service for my computers. I have pointed h.lohray.com to my EC2 instance in the NS record of lohray.com and have installed dnsmasq on that system and have made sure to unblock the firewall port.

For now, I have statistically added an entry on my /etc/hosts file.

129.118.19.163 i7.h.lohray.com

however, i7.h.lohray.com does not resolve correctly with nslookup or dig :-( This is the only time I could have this resolved (online nslookup) - 50.19.103.190 is the IP address of the EC2 instance where dnsmasq is running. Where could I have gone wrong?

We had a colo server and registered a domain for it. When we did that we had to provide the name and the IP address of the nameservers (pointing to the server) as the nameserver names were within that domain (let's call them ns.example.com and ns2.example.com)

Over time various people also hosted with us and we just got them to change their authoritative nameservers to ns and ns2.example.com.

We're in the process of migrating services to a shiny new server at a different location with (obviously) different IP addresses.

We have now moved all the content for us and others and updated the DNS records to point A/MX etc to the new server.

Now we wish to move the DNS service itself with the aim of getting rid of the original server entirely.

So the question is; if we just change the DNS for example.com and point ns and ns2 A records to the new server will it work (allowing time to propogate with DNS served from both servers)?

My concern is the original need to register the IP addresses of the nameservers. Do we need to re-register them somehow?

I really want to keep our nameserver names the same to stop everyone having to change the nameservers for their domains.

Hope that's clear, thanks in advance.

Dave.