What do the Primary and Secondary DNS server names do and why are they necessary?
When you register a domain name the authority for management of that domain is delegated to you via an ‘authoritative’ DNS (normally at your ISP). The DNS identifiers are defined in the registration record for your domain (DNS names and IP addresses – usually two but can be more) and are maintained in one of a number of centralised DNS that every DNS is the world uses. When your local DNS looks for a name, say, www.mydomain.com and cannot find it locally, it will ask one of these centralised DNS for the information. The centralised DNS will supply back the name and IP address of the DNS which contains the ‘authoritative’ information for your domain. The local DNS will then interrogate the ‘authoritative’ DNS for the domain (‘mydomain.com’) for the specific service or server e.g. www and get back the IP address of the requested service or server. The reason for having Primary and Secondary DNS is for redundancy purposes. A single DNS may become overloaded or even break down, so if the f
