Important roles that DNS Servers take on:-

1) Caching Only Servers

All DNS Servers cache the results of their queries. However, some DNS Servers
are put into place to provide only this caching function. The Caching-only DNS
server does not contain zone information or a zone database file. The Caching-only
server only contains information based on the results of queries that it has already
performed. In this case, the cache takes the place of the zone database file. These
Caching-only DNS Servers can be set up quickly, and are an important ally in your
network and Internet security design.

All DNS servers have a cache.dns file that contains the IP addresses of all
Internet root servers. The Windows 2000 cache.dns file is also referred to as the
root hints file. The caching only server uses this list to begin building its cache. It
adds to the cache as it issues iterative queries when responding to client requests
to resolve Fully Qualified Domain Names to IP addresses. After the FQDNs are
resolved to IP addresses, this information is stored in the DNS Server cache.

Caching only servers are valuable because:

 They do not participate in zone transfer, and therefore there is no zone

transfer traffic
 They can be placed on the far side of a slow WAN link and provide host name
resolution for remote offices that do not require a high level of host name
resolution support
 They can be implemented to provide secure host name resolution when
configured as Forwarders

2) Slave Server
A Slave Server is a server that always forwards queries it cannot satisfy from
its cache, to a fixed list of forwarding servers instead of interacting with the
name servers for the root and other domains. The queries to the forwarding
servers are recursive queries. There may be one or more forwarding servers,
and they are tried in turn until the list is exhausted. A Slave and forwarder
configuration is typically used when you do not wish all the servers at a given
site to interact with the rest of the Internet servers. A typical scenario would
involve a number of workstations and a departmental timesharing machine with
 Internet access. The workstations might be administratively prohibited from
having Internet access. To give the workstations the appearance of access to
the Internet domain system, the workstations could be Slave servers to the
timesharing machine which would forward the queries and interact with other
name servers to resolve the query before returning the answer. An added
benefit of using the forwarding feature is that the central machine develops a
much more complete cache of information that all the workstations can take
advantage of. The use of Slave mode and forwarding is discussed further under
the description of the named botflies commands.

There is no prohibition against declaring a server to be a slave even though it

has primary and/or secondary zones as well; the effect will still be that
anything in the local server's cache or zones will be answered, and anything else
will be forwarded using the forwarders list.

3) Dynamic DNS Servers (DDNS)

If there is one characteristic the defines the difference between the Windows
2000 DNS Server and previous versions of Microsoft DNS Servers, it is the
Windows 2000 DNS Server's ability to dynamically update the information
contained in its zone databases.

This behavior is very much like what you have seen with WINS Servers. A WINS
Server allows NetBIOS nodes on the network to update their NetBIOS name and
IP address mappings dynamically. This was a real advantage on earlier versions of
Microsoft networks since all of them had been NetBIOS based.

Windows 2000 is free of the shackles of NetBIOS (for the most part) and uses
the DNS scheme for computer and domain naming. While there are many
advantages to using the DNS rather than NetBIOS, there is a major problem: zone
database files were originally designed to be static databases. If any update
needed to be done to the zone contents, it would have to be done manually by the
DNS administrator.

Manual administration of the zone databases on a large a DNS based network, such
as an enterprise Windows 2000 network, would be a very large and difficult task.
The task would be even more onerous when DHCP is used extensively and when
DHCP assigns varying IP addresses to shared network resources. The Dynamic DNS
Update Protocol solves this major hurdle to widespread implementation of DNS on
Windows networks.
Dynamic DNS works more effortlessly when all the clients on the network are
running Windows 2000. A Windows 2000 client can register its own Host (A) record
and Pointer (PTR) record information in the DDNS zone database file. Most
network won't work this way, and you'll have a mix of network clients. In this case,
you should take advantage of the Windows 2000 DHCP Server's ability to dynamic
register Host and Pointer record information at the DDNS Server on the behalf of
down level Windows based clients.

4) Forwarding Servers
A forwarding (a.k.a. Proxy, Client, Remote) server is one which simply forwards all
requests to another DNS and caches the results. On its face this look a pretty
pointless exercise. However a forwarding DNS sever can pay-off in two ways where
access to an external network is slow or expensive:

1. Local DNS server caching - reduces external access and both speeds up
responses and removes unnecessary traffic.
2. Remote DNS server provides recursive query support - reduction in traffic
across the link - results in a single query across the network.

Forwarding servers also can be used to ease the burden of local administration by
providing a single point at which changes to remote name servers may be managed,
rather than having to update all hosts.

Forwarding can also be used as part of a Split Server configuration for perimeter
defense.