If you think carefully about the two words, Conditional and Forwarding then this feature becomes self explanatory. Deeper thought raises more problems than it solves. What condition? Where
does it forward? Above all where do find this feature.
Configuring Conditional Forwarding
Let us begin by discovering where you configure Conditional Forwarding. Start at the server icon in the DNS snap-in (not the Forward Lookup Zone). Right click, properties, Forwarders (Tab).
Take the scenario where shootemup.com is an associate of your organization. Moreover, your users are for ever querying their server. If shootemup.com kindly provide the IP address of their server
which is authoritative for shootemup.com then you can configure that server as a conditional forwarder.
To summarise, the Condition is that one of your clients query is for shootemup.com. The Forwarding is to the IP address specified at the Forwarders tab of your DNS server.
So what would happen without Conditional Forwarding? The answer is that your server would ' walk the root hints '. The server (Alan in the diagram), contacts the root server ' . ' on the
internet. The root server forwards your request to the .com server who in turn forwards the request to shootemup.com's server.
In a nutshell, Conditional Forwarding is like taking a short cut.
One last question, what happens if your clients query someonelse.org. The answer is that your server goes the long way around and ' walks the root hints '. Unless of course you are friendly with
someonelse.org and configure another Conditional Forwarder.
Guy Recommends: A Free Trial of the Network Performance Monitor
(NPM)
Solarwinds'
Orion performance monitor
will help you discover what's happening on your network. This
utility will also guide you through troubleshooting; the dashboard will
indicate whether the root cause is a broken link, faulty equipment or
resource overload.
Perhaps the NPM's best feature is the way it suggests solutions to network
problems. Its
second best feature is the ability to monitor the health of individual VMWare
virtual machines. If you are interested in troubleshooting, and creating network maps, then I recommend that you take advantage of Solarwinds' offer.
DNS in Windows 2000 was a huge improvement over NT4.0 Windows Server 2003 new DNS features iron out a few problems, add a few new features which speed up performance in large forests.
»
If you like this page then please share it with your friends
Guy Recommends: Orion's NPM - Network Performance Monitor
Orion's performance monitor is designed for detecting network outages. NPM makes it easy to see what's working, and what needs your attention.
This utility guides you through creating network maps. It also helps troubleshooting by indicating whether the root cause is faulty equipment, or resource overload.
