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").