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DNS Name Space Administrative Hierarchy Partitioning: DNS Zones of Authority (Page 1 of 3) I explained earlier in this topic that the DNS name space is arranged in a hierarchy, and that there is also a hierarchy of authorities that is related to that hierarchical name structure. However, the two hierarchies are not exactly the same. The reason is that if they were the same, this would mean we needed a separate authority for every domain at every level of the tree, and that's something we are very unlikely to want to have everywhere in the structure. At the very top levels of the DNS tree, it seems reasonable that we might want to designate a separate authority at each level of the structure. Consider the geopolitical name hierarchy; IANA/ICANN manages the root domain, but each of the ccTLDs is managed by a distinct national authority However, when you get to the lower levels of the structure, it is often inconvenient or downright impossible to have each level correspond to a separate authority. As an example, let's suppose you are in charge of the Googleplex University IT department, which runs its own DNS servers for the googleplex.edu domain. Suppose there were only two schools at this university, teaching Fine Arts and Computer Science. Suppose also that the name space for the computers were divided into three subdomains: finearts.googleplex.edu, compsci.googleplex.edu, and admin.googleplex.edu (for central administrative functions, including the IT department itself). Most likely, you don't want or need the Fine Arts department running its own DNS servers, and they probably don't want to, either. The same is likely true of the administration machines. However, it's possible that the Computer Science department does want to run its own DNS servers, because they probably have many more computers than the other departments, and they might use running a DNS server as part of their curriculum. In this case, you might want yourself, the administrator for googleplex.edu, to maintain authority for the finearts.googleplex.edu and admin.googleplex.edu subdomains and everything within them, while delegating authority for compsci.googleplex.edu to whomever in the Computer Science department is designated for the task.
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