I posted this earlier and didn't get any replies so this time I'll go into more detail. Currently, I have a box running RH7.2 as my firewall. It is running DHCP to provide the internal machines with IP's and is also running named. The internal machines use the Linux box as a DNS server and the Linux system, in turn, uses my cable provider's DNS servers to resolve hostnames. This works well and allows me to enter bogus DNS entries for websites like doubleclick.net that I don't want to be able to resolve into my named.conf. Now, here is my issue. It has to do with reverse DNS lookup. I am running SSH to remotely administer the firewall and every time I SSH in and check out my log file (filename: "secure"), it shows all the connection attempts via SSH, but it says "unable to resolve xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx". I want to it to ask my cable provider's DNS servers for the reverse DNS lookup. How do I do this? In other words, how do I get the linux to query the cable DNS servers for reverse-lookup DNS resolving?

My network works in the same way - split DNS system.

In my named.conf I use the forwarders directive to forward any name services requests to my ISP DNS servers. Then I set up my local zone files (forward and reverse) with forwarders set to nothing.

This means when a host on my internal network lookups up another host or address on the internal network, the local DNS is used. If the host looks up an external host or address, the request is forwarded to the ISP nameservers. See the sample named.conf file below:

options {
directory "/var/named";
coresize=10M;
max-transfer-time-in 60;
forwarders { 10.0.0.1; 10.0.0.2; };
forward only;
};

// reverse local zone
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "reverse.local";
};

// internal domain zone
zone "local.net" {
type "master";
file "local.net";
forwarders {};
notify yes;
};

// internal reverse domain zone
zone "0.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
type "master";
file "0.168.192";
forwarders {};
notify yes;
};

Also, a really good resource for all things DNS is the ask MR DNS website:

http://www.acmebw.com/askmrdns

So the forwarders{} command will forward reverse DNS to the outside DNS servers?

I tried your named.conf. I still get Unable to resolve IP when I SSH in however..