Concept

DNS zone

Summary
A DNS zone is a specific portion of the DNS namespace in the Domain Name System (DNS), which a specific organization or administrator manages. A DNS zone is an administrative space allowing more granular control of the DNS components, such as authoritative nameserver. The DNS is broken up into different zones, distinctly managed areas in the DNS namespace. DNS zones are not necessarily physically separated from one another; however, a DNS zone can contain multiple subdomains, and multiple zones can exist on the same server. The domain namespace of the Internet is organized into a hierarchical layout of subdomains below the DNS root domain. The individual domains of this tree may serve as delegation points for administrative authority and management. However, it is usually desirable to implement fine-grained delegation boundaries so that multiple sub-levels of a domain may be managed independently. Therefore, the domain name space is partitioned into areas (zones) for this purpose. A zone starts at a domain and extends downward in the tree to the leaf nodes or to the top-level of subdomains where other zones start. A DNS zone is implemented in the configuration system of a domain name server. Historically, it is defined in the , an operating system that starts with the special DNS record type Start of Authority (SOA) and contains all records for the resources described within the zone. This format was originally used by the Berkeley Internet Name Domain Server (BIND) software package and is defined in RFC 1034 and RFC 1035. Most top-level domain name registry operators offer their namespaces to the public or entities with the mandated geographic or otherwise scoped purpose for registering second-level domains. Similarly, an organization in charge of a lower-level domain may operate its namespace and subdivide its space. Each registration or allocation of subdomain space obligates the registrant to maintain an administrative and technical infrastructure to manage the responsibility for its zone, including sub-delegation to lower-level domains.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.