DNS Zones

A DNS zone is a set of files or records (more precisely, a database of resource record entries) that corresponds to part of the DNS hierarchical namespace. DNS zones are used to delineate which DNS Servers are responsible (authoritative) for resolving name-resolution queries for a given section of the DNS hierarchy. DNS zones differ from the domain structure in the following fashion: zones can be composed of one or more DNS domains. One zone in the gadgets.widgets.microsoft.com domain tree might be authoritative for the gadgets and widgets domains. In other words, there is not a requirement for DNS zones to have a one-to-one relationship with DNS domains.