Secondary zone

A secondary zone on NameSurfer is a zone whose primary name server is not the NameSurfer server itself, but another DNS server that NameSurfer will periodically check for updates. The zone data can be viewed on NameSurfer user interface just as if it were a local zone, and copy of the zone data is stored in NameSurfer's database. Editing secondary zone data through NameSurfer interface is not possible, a secondary zone can only be added or removed from NameSurfer.

On zone listings, a secondary zone is indicated by a icon in the zone status field.

To receive secondary zone data, NameSurfer must be told the address and port of the zone master server(s) where updates to the zone must be queried for. The master server(s) must be configured to allow zone transfer requests from the NameSurfer server in order to get the zone data into NameSurfer. If the zone data cannot be retrieved when a zone refresh period has expired, a icon will be displayed in zone listing status field. If the zone data cannot be retrieved before the zone data has timed out, an icon is shown.

NameSurfer checks a secondary zone for updates on the interval specified in the refresh field of the zone's SOA records. If the check fails, it will be tried again after an interval specified in the retry field of the record. If the data hasn't been retrieved within the period specified in zone's timeout field, NameSurfer will no longer answer to DNS queries on the zone, and will indicate error on the zone listing page.

For a recently added secondary zone that doesn't yet have a SOA record, the first retrieval is attempted immediately upon zone addition to NameSurfer. If the retrieval fails, a new attempt is scheduled to happen 60 minutes (1 hour) after the first attempt. During this period the administrator should check that the master servers are correctly specified for the zone in NameSurfer and that the servers are configured to allow the NameSurfer server IP address to do zone transfer (AXFR/IXFR) queries. When a new secondary zone is added, it is always first queried using an AXFR query to retrieve the whole zone data. Subsequent update queries are done using the incremental (IXFR) transfer mode.