Difference between authoritative dns server and recursive dns server

[Stranger01]

I have several queries regarding the Firewall or may be i am not able to understand the basics of the firewall. So here is the some changes i had done with the settings of the firewall. What i have done is that i had started an outbound rule which allowed http, https ports, while all the clients had to go through the DNS server. The result i found that it did not open any pages. So i did the necessary changes and this time what i did was only to allow all the outbound requests from the DNS server to outside.. With these, all the clients can open the pages. To make it more small i allowed only the DNS from the dns server to communicate with outside this did not allow clients to open the pages. So now i want to know that whenever we request a page is it necessary to connect to our own DNS?

[Connect_Me]

Well when you request a page you have to pass it through to the recursive DNS. The client operating system usually don't have it's own recursive system but they depend on the DNS which is configured to perform such type of queries. You have also not specified that whether your DNS is a recursive, authorative or both. I will assume that it is the recursive one and the clients are logging into the server for the recursive operation. Allowing the DNS server to connect to external IPS through the DNS port should be sufficient for it to work properly.Also you can restrict the clients from connecting to the outbound dns and allowing them to connect only with the inbound dns for the recursive purpose.

[Stranger01]

OK thanks for helping me out with this one. Now pointing to the one of the statements that you had said in the above solution. That i have not specified whether the servers is a recursive one or the authority one. So i just wanted to ask how can we get to know whether my DNS server is a recursive one or a authority one? Your suggestions have really helped me. It would be better if you help me with this one also.

[Amie]

Well if you ask me i would say that the main dns server is maintained by the distributed database system. Now in this hierarchy for every domain there is a authorative server which has all the information about the particular domain and also the other module which are under the main domain module. This domain system mostly follows the tree hierarchy. Well its very easy to identify the authorative server. This server mostly used to answer the main queries that has been configured by the main source. The authorative server is the main server which has the original copy of the various zone records. While if you consider the recursive servers they are just used for the traffic control. With all the queries fired on the authorative server there would be a huge traffic. So it does the work of the traffic control and does the job of recursive operation of the clients and they have the authority to store DNS query results, for a period of time determined in the configuration. So this is what you may be wanting to know. Hope you have cleared your confusion.