Today's word in the Networking ABC's starts with the letter Z.  This entry will round out the 26 entries in the Networking ABC's series so I wanted to make sure I got a good one for Z.  When one thinks about computer networking, switches and routers come to mind.  But what makes the whole internet thing work resolves around resolving user friendly domain names into network addresses.  Products such as F5's Global Traffic Manager do all the hard work so your users can get to your site regardless of the geographic location.  The information where these domain entries are stored are called Zones and that just so happens to be my pick for today.

"Z" is for Zone

Zone

Pronounced: Zohn

A DNS zone is a portion of the global Domain Name System (DNS) namespace for which administrative responsibility has been delegated. 

The most tangible expression of a DNS zone are the database elements that are used to technically administer a zone in a DNS management software system. Traditionally, each zone was stored in a separate database file, the Zone file, containing specification for host addressing, name aliasing, electronic mail routing, backup server systems, geographic location, administrative contacts, and many other pieces of information (cf. List of DNS record types), with an extensible design that has scaled well with the growth of the Internet.