What is Authoritative and Non-authoritative DNS Server? Understand the difference between Authoritative and Non-answer for DNS query in simple words.
What is Non-Authoritative DNS Server?
Non-authoritative name servers do not contain original source files of domain’s zone. They have a cache file for the domains that is constructed from all the DNS lookups done previously. If a DNS server responded for a DNS query which doesn’t have original file is known as a Non-authoritative answer.
For example, we query for DNS records of domain tecadmin.net and Google’s open DNS server 8.8.8.8 responded for this query which doesn’t contain domain’s original zone files. This answer is known as a Non-authoritative answer.
nslookup tecadmin.net Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: Name: tecadmin.net Address: 104.27.189.217 Name: tecadmin.net Address: 104.27.188.217
What is Authoritative DNS Server?
An authoritative name server is a name server that has the original source files of a domain zone files. The is where the domain administrator has configured the DNS records for a domain. Authoritative DNS server can be master DNS server or its slaves.
For example – domain tecadmin.net’s authoritative are alec.ns.cloudflare.com and athena.ns.cloudflare.com. If you directly query to these DNS servers, they will return authoritative answer because they have the original files of domain zone.
nslookup tecadmin.net alec.ns.cloudflare.com Server: alec.ns.cloudflare.com Address: 173.245.59.59#53 Name: tecadmin.net Address: 104.27.188.217 Name: tecadmin.net Address: 104.27.189.217
4 Comments
this is not correct. non-authoritative server respond means that the original files exist on this server. authorative server respond means that your request look up the cache of the dns’ that you are using on the device which you send requests from.
Simplified precisely. Weldone!
Explained it very well, thank you for your time in doing this.
Very Helpful. Thank you