IETF RFC 2308 PDF

[RFC1034] provided a description of how to cache negative responses. It however had a fundamental flaw in that it did not allow a name server to hand out those cached responses to other resolvers, thereby greatly reducing the effect of the caching. This document addresses issues raise in the light of experience and replaces [RFC1034 Section 4.3.4].

Negative caching was an optional part of the DNS specification and deals with the caching of the non-existence of an RRset [RFC2181] or domain name.

Negative caching is useful as it reduces the response time for negative answers. It also reduces the number of messages that have to be sent between resolvers and name servers hence overall network traffic. A large proportion of DNS traffic on the Internet could be eliminated if all resolvers implemented negative caching. With this in mind negative caching should no longer be seen as an optional part of a DNS resolver.