What are the pros and cons of running slaves versus caching-only name servers?

Answered Tue, 25 Jun 2002

> Question: I am in the process of setting up dns servers in several locations for my
> business. I have looked into having a primary master server running in my server
> room and adding slave servers in the other areas. I then thought I could just
> setup a primary and a single slave server and run caching only servers in the other
> areas. What are the pros and cons of these two options, or should I run a slave
> server in every location and still have a caching server with it? I just don't
> know what the best way would be. Please help.

The main advantage of having slaves everywhere is that you have a
source of your own zone data on each name server. So if you have
a community of hosts near each slave that look up domain names in
your zones, the local name server can answer most of their queries.

On the other hand, administering slaves is a little more work than
administering caching-only name servers, and a little greater burden
on the primary master name server.

cricket