Argthtjtr

In an iterative DNS query, requests made by the local DNS server to the root, TLD and authoritative servers can be cached inside the local DNS. Whereas in the recursive query, only the specific hostname to IP address can be cached in local DNS server. Does this mean that iterative DNS queries are faster since it contains more entries cached in the local DNS server ?

If that is not the case would there be a difference between the two methods.

In recursive DNS query, the client only sends the query to the first DNS server.
The server, if it cannot answer, will send the request to next server and so on,
until the query is resolved.
Here the DNS client requires that the DNS server respond to the query,
so the burden is on Server to resolve the query.

In iterative DNS query, the client is responsible for sending the query to successive
servers, until the query is resolved by hitting a server that is authorized for
the domain name (or until an error or time-out).
Here the burden is on the client to resolve the query.

I don't think that there is a big difference in speed between the two,
except that a DNS server that is high enough in the hierarchy will likely
have available a faster Internet connection than the client.

For the iterative DNS query, the client will end up with having the successive
intermediate DNS servers in its cache, but I don't see how it may use this
to advantage.

In more detail, these are the four most common answers a DNS server can provide:

• 
  Authoritative - a positive answer returned to the client with the Authoritative Answer (AA) bit set in the response.


• 
  Positive - an answer that contains the resource record (RR) or list of RRs that match the query.


• 
  Referral - an answer that contains a list of alternate servers the client can use to resolve the name. This type of answer is given if Recursion is not supported.


• 
  Negative - this answer indicates that an Authoritative server reported that the name (or record type) does not exist in the DNS name space.

In the Iterative query, the client sends a query to the server.
If recursion is disabled, and the server cannot answer the query,
the server will respond with a Referral answer.
The client will then use that information to query another DNS server.
This process will continue until a server responds with an Authoritative or
Negative response, or until the client runs out of time.