## BIND Configuration File Guide--`server` Statement

### Syntax

    server ip_addr {
      [ bogus yes_or_no; ]
      [ support-ixfr yes_or_no; ]
      [ transfers number; ]
      [ transfer-format ( one-answer | many-answers ); ]
      [ keys { key_id [key_id ... ] }; ]
    };

### Definition and Usage

The server statement defines the characteristics to be associated with a remote name server.

If you discover that a server is giving out bad data, marking it as `bogus` will prevent further queries to it. The default value of `bogus` is `no`. Marking a server as `bogus` will mark all other addresses for that server as `bogus` when a match is made when looking up a server's address by name.

If the server supports IXFR you can tell named to attempt to perform a IXFR style zone transfer by specifing `support-ixfr yes`. The default value of `support-ixfr` is `no`.

The server supports two zone transfer methods. The first, `one-answer`, uses one DNS message per resource record transferred. `many-answers` packs as many resource records as possible into a message. `many-answers` is more efficient, but is only known to be understood by BIND 8.1 and patched versions of BIND 4.9.5. You can specify which method to use for a server with the `transfer-format` option. If `transfer-format` is not specified, the `transfer-format` specified by the `options` statement will be used.

The `transfers` will be used in a future release of the server to limit the number of concurrent in-bound zone transfers from the specified server. It is checked for syntax but is otherwise ignored.

The `keys` clause is used to identify a key_id defined by the `key` statement, to be used for transaction security when talking to the remote server. The `key` statememnt must come before the `server` statement that references it. When a request is sent to the remote server, a request signature will be generated using the key specified here and appended to the message. A request originating from the remote server is not required to be signed by this key.

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