Which nameservers am I using?

[Michael Hipp]

David Bandel wrote:
> On 5/29/05, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
> 
>>Net Llama! wrote:
>>
>>>207.191.50.10 is borked.  If i try to use it, i'm not gettting anything
>>>back either.  Where did you get that one from?
>>
>>It's the one for the network this server will be attached to when it is
>>delivered to the client. I presume it's only accessible internally.
>>
>>But that's not the point. Why does it just stop after the first one? Why not
>>try all three listed servers?
>>
> 
> 
> Because the server didn't fail, _did_ reply (just not a usable reply).
>  It didn't give a recursive lookup.  The IP you came from is probably
> part of a view that has "recursive no;" as an option.

Ok. What I'm understanding is that remote machine that didn't want to answer 
me in effect said "I'm not going to answer and you're not allowed to ask 
anyone else either." Why does the algorithm allow such a thing? Why wouldn't 
my nslookup/dig just keep going down the list until it got a usable answer 
rather than slavishly obeying such an order?

Michael