Authoritative nameservers
The other component of the magical lookup process that results in a successful DNS query is the authoritative nameservers. These nameservers actually hold the zone data for the names being queried and they respond to those queries for all zones that they are authoritative for.
Much of this book is specific to operating authoritative nameservers, which is why this section may seem relatively scant, compared to our look at resolvers.
Suffice it to say here that in broad terms, authoritative nameservers are often split into two subcategories, "masters" and "slaves" or "primaries" and "secondaries" (and sometimes even "tertiaries," which really just means, "additional secondary").
Primary Nameserver
The primary nameserver is the authoritative nameserver that contains the actual zonedata from which all other authoritative nameservers obtain their copy. Traditionally, since the vast majority of nameservers still run BIND, this means the nameserver is the source of the zonedata...
