IT Learning | Server | Authoritative name server
Everything might be not exactly correct in this article but it’s very useful for beginners to understand IT terms. If you want to learn IT but you don’t have any experiences to work in IT industries, I wish it helps you to understand IT and you like to study IT more.
Let’s start our 3 minutes lesson!
What is Authoritative name server?
- Authoritative name server is a DNS server.
- Authoritative name server gives answers in response to questions asked about names in a zone.
- If Authoritative name server doesn’t know the answer, it replays “I’m sorry”.
1. Authoritative name server
Authoritative name server is a DNS, and it has the role to answer the information which it manages.
Authoritative name server has the list which is written mapping IP address to Domain name, and it answers the questions about IP address or Domain name based on that list.
More detail is here.
An authoritative name server is a name server that gives answers in response to questions asked about names in a zone. An authoritative-only name server returns answers only to queries about domain names that have been specifically configured by the administrator. Name servers can also be configured to give authoritative answers to queries in some zones, while acting as a caching name server for all other zones.
Name server – Wikipedia
An authoritative name server can either be a primary server (master) or a secondary server (slave). A primary server for a zone is the server that stores the definitive versions of all records in that zone.
I already explains the role of DNS in the following article.
What is DNS? IT Learning | Network | DNS | Japan Teams
The summary is like this. DNS is the system to translate IP address to “Domain name” for humans and “Domain name” to IP address for computers.
![](https://japanteams.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image-51-1024x448.png)
2. The role of Authoritative name server
There are mainly two types of DNS.
One of DNS tries to answer your question whatever they do.
That DNS asks the question to other DNS which seems to have answers.
![](https://japanteams.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image-54-1024x362.png)
This DNS server is called Cache name server.
And the role of another DNS is answering information managed by itself.
It has the list of mapping about IP address and Domain name, and it answers the questions based on that list.
Authoritative name server has this job.
If Ms. Authoritative name server find the address, she will answer that.
![](https://japanteams.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image-53-1024x371.png)
If she can’t find the answer, she answers “I’m sorry that I don’t know…”, but she will introduce another DNS who seems to have the answer.
![](https://japanteams.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image-56.png)
Or she will say “What are you talking about?”, “Do you know what you talk about?” if your question doesn’t make sense.
![](https://japanteams.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image-57.png)
This is simple explanation about “Authoritative name server”.
If you need more information, please check the following information. I’ll explain other DNS roles soon.
3. Related Information
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Information source
What Is Authoritative Name Server? (dnsknowledge.com)
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