I want to forward the request to http:\\ftp.unitedknow.edu to ftp:\\unitedknow.edu. can it be done using configs (DNS data) of named server....

no, that makes no sense... you can't just jump protocol like that. either it's http or it's ftp... make your mind up... How you you feel if mid conversation the person you were speaking to started talking latin and expected you to understand?

additionally, forwarding http is outside of DNS. DNS can tell you the ip address of a certain machine, and could be told to report that both servers have the same address, but it has nothign whatsoever to do with http or ftp.

and that's a rubbish title... please be more descriptive next time.

Em, no. heres why:

the xxxx:\\ part specifies a protocol, not a computer.

in http:\\ftp.unitedknow.edu you tell the computer to contact a computer called ftp in the domain unitedknow.edu using the hypertext transfer protocol (meaning port 80, usually).

Chaning it to the proposed would mean that you have a computer called unitedknow and you own the domain edu... which you propably dont... using ftp (port 21 or 25 for control lines, I not sure which, and a high port for the data transfer). So acid is right, this makes no sense what so ever...

What you can do is create an alias to another computer (say download.unitedknow.edu) using the CNAME syntax in your bind config file (actually, the file pointed to for this domain by named.conf). namely so:

ftp IN A 192.168.2.12 #just an example address
download IN CNAME ftp

or you can symply run a ftp server on ftp.unitedknow.edu, which means that you simply substitute the http for ftp in the protocol identifier of the URL... ftp:\\ftp.unitedknow.edu

I don't think a http server can talk to a ftp server and hand over a request. What you're asking is for the web server (for example Apache) to hand over a request to the ftp server (for example vsftpd) and for it to come back to your browser transparently.

A proxy server (for example Squid) can handle ftp and http requests, but won't change a request protocol from http to ftp. It also can't be done using a name server.

If you're only trying to stop users going to the http site, can you email them a link to the ftp site that they can add to their bookmarks?