On Sun, 2008-03-09 at 22:02 -0700, John R Pierce wrote: > Manish Kathuria wrote: > > What is the maximum number of nameservers mentioned in /etc/resolv.conf > > which will be queried while looking up a hostname or IP address in the > > present version ? Earlier implementations had a ceiling of 3 name > > servers which could be queried. Has there been any increase ? > > > > only one server is ever queried. only if it if it can't be reached at > all will it fall back on the 2nd one (and if that can't be reached, the > 3rd) a answer of 'host not found' from the primary server does /not/ > trigger any fallback, instead it returns "not found". > > so, why would you need more than 3 ? DNS servers should have a .9999 > uptime. The idea is to switch between multiple internet links for the same internal network, without making frequent changes to /etc/resolv.conf. The ISPs here don't allow DNS look ups from an IP not belong to their address, so a number of look up requests get denied when the outgoing connection is through another ISP. Of course, I can run a caching nameserver on the small network or use Open DNS servers but that adds to the delay. Thank you, Manish