educative.io

Authoritative servers are located within the organization

Courses
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#1

What does this line mean: “Since authoritative servers are located within the organization”?

I am not getting which organization it is talking about?

Course: Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers - Learn Interactively
Lesson: How the Domain Name System Works

#2

Hi Ashish.

The organization refers to the company or entity that owns the domain name. For example, the authoritative name servers for educative.io would be located within Educative, the organization that owns the educative.io domain.

These servers would provide the actual IP addresses for Educative’s websites and services.

Note: “within the organization” should be taken with a grain of salt. That means that the specific organization has full control on the authoritative servers. Those servers might be hosted by orgs like GCP or AWS or GoDaddy etc on the organization’s behalf.

I hope that clears it up. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Thank you.

#3

I would fix this in the course, it’s confusing and not correct for the vast majority of organizations. Almost nobody hosts their own authoritative servers.

Course: Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers - AI-Powered Learning for Developers
Lesson: How the Domain Name System Works - Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers

Course: Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers - AI-Powered Learning for Developers
Lesson: How the Domain Name System Works - Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers

#4

Hi Regis,

You’re partially correct.

Many organizations do not physically host their own authoritative servers. However, when we say “within the organization,” we mean that the organization has control over the data on those servers, even if they are physically located in a data center managed by a third-party provider like AWS, Google Cloud, etc.

The key point is that the organization has the authority to manage and update the DNS records for its domain, hence the term “authoritative” server.

We appreciate your feedback and will consider clarifying this point in the course.

Thank you.