title: Configuring bind to only forward DNS to a specific zone
---
pub_date: 2021-07-25
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author: ungleich
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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_hidden: no
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_discoverable: yes
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abstract:
Want to use BIND for proxying to another server? This is how you do it.
---
body:

## Introduction

In this article we'll show you an easy solution to host DNS zones on
IPv6 only or private DNS servers. The method we use here is **DNS
forwarding** as offered in ISC BIND, but one could also see this as
**DNS proxying**.

## Background

Sometimes you might have a DNS server that is authoritative for DNS
data, but is not reachable for all clients. This might be the case for
instance, if

* your DNS server is IPv6 only: it won't be directly reachable from
  the IPv4 Internet
* your DNS server is running in a private network, either IPv4 or IPv6

In both cases, you need something that is publicly reachable, to
enable clients to access the zone, like show in the following picture:

![](dns-proxy-forward.png)

## The problem: Forwarding requires recursive queries

ISC Bind allows to forward queries to another name server. However to
do so, it need to be configured to allow handling recursive querying.
However, if we allow recursive querying by any client, we basically
create an [Open DNS resolver, which can be quite
dangerous](https://www.ncsc.gov.ie/emailsfrom/DDoS/DNS/).

## The solution

ISC Bind by default has a root hints file compiled in, which allows it
to function as a resolver without any additional configuration
files. That is great, but not if you want to prevent it to work as
forwarder as described above. But we can easily fix that problem. Now,
let's have a look at a real world use case, step-by-step:

### Step 1: Global options

In the first step, we need to set the global to allow recursion from
anyone, as follows:

```
options {
    directory "/var/cache/bind";

    listen-on-v6 { any; };

    allow-recursion { ::/0; 0.0.0.0/0; };
};
```

However as mentioned above, this would create an open resolver. To
prevent this, let's disable the root hints:

### Step 2: Disable root hints

The root hints are served in the root zone, also know as ".". To
disable it, we give bind an empty file to use:

```
zone "." {
        type hint;
        file "/dev/null";
};
```

Note: in case you do want to allow recursive function for some
clients, **you can create multiple DNS views**.

### Step 3: The actual DNS file

In our case, we have a lot of IPv6 only kubernetes clusters, which are
named `xx.k8s.ooo` and have a world wide rachable CoreDNS server built
in. In this case, we want to allow the domain c1.k8s.ooo to be world
reachable, so we configure the dual stack server

```
zone "c1.k8s.ooo"  {
   type forward;
   forward only;
   forwarders { 2a0a:e5c0:2:f::a; };
};
```