Forward Zone

The forward zones are the ones that are used to translate the hostnames into IP addresses. Here is an example file for the bob.org zone:

@		IN	NS	dns.bob.org.
@		IN	NS	dns2.bob.org..
$ORIGIN edu.
bob		IN	SOA	bob.org.	root.bob.org. (
			2002121301 ; serial
			10800 ; refresh
			3600 ; retry
			604800 ; expire
			86400 ; default_ttl
			)
bob		IN	NS	dns.bob.org.
bob		IN	NS	dns2.bob.org.
$ORIGIN bob.org.
localhost		IN	A	127.0.0.1
gateway		IN	A	1.2.3.1
dns		IN	A	1.2.3.2
dns2		IN	A	1.2.3.3
bob.org.	IN	A	1.2.3.4
www		IN	CNAME	bob.org.

This will set up bob.org so that there are four machines with hostnames. The gateway, which is probably a switch is sitting at 1.2.3.1. The name servers are at 1.2.3.2 and 1.2.3.3. Their names are dns.bob.org and dns2.bob.org. The last machine is the bob.org web server. This machine is at 1.2.3.4 and has two names. The real name or the CNAME is bob.org. It also has an alias www.bob.org which points to the machine with the CNAME bob.org.