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DNS Forward & Reverse Lookup zone

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by kmulla1036

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I would like some help defining and explaining the reason for a forward and reverse lookup zone.

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by cptomlly

A foward lookup is used to resolve host names (server.mydomain.com) to IP addresses(192.168.21.21). To do this it uses A records in the forward lookup zone that contain the IP address information for the host.

A reverse lookup is used to resolve IP addresses back to the host name they are assigned to. This is by using PTR records. This record will reverse the IP address and add in-addr.arpa(21.21.168.192.in-addr.arpa) and will reference to the host name (server.mydomain.com)

Here's a link to a good explaination (for Windows DNS anyway) with diagrams and such on Technet:

http://tinyurl.com/38zof

Here's another more general DNS site with lots of good information:

http://tinyurl.com/3hml5

Hope this helps.

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