Views

A domain name server provides each client with customized information according to views. This function, sometimes called split-horizon DNS, can improve security and privacy management of DNS zone records.

If you have a domain name while you wish to provide different responses to queries from external and internal sources, you can create different views with separate resource records.

View Management

Before creating and managing views, you should create at least one zone. See Zones for more information.

To create a new view:

  1. On the Views page, click Create.
  2. At the General tab of the dialog box, edit the following settings:
    • View name: Enter a name for the view.
    • Limit source IP service: This option allows you to specify which users can access the view resources, such as zone files or forwarder servers. Click the Source IP List button to specify hosts or subnets.
    • Enable forwarders: This option allows you to redirect recursive queries resolved by this view to forwarder servers. For more details regarding forwarders, please see Resolution.
  3. Go to the Select Zone tab.
  4. Select zones to add to the view. One view cannot include multiple zones with the same domain name.
  5. Click Save.

Note:

  • The resolution service must be enabled for the forwarder settings here to be applied.
  • If forwarders are disabled here, the system applies the forwarder settings specified on the Resolution page.
  • View names can include up to 32 Unicode characters, including letters, numbers, as well as dashes, underscores, and dots.

To edit views:

  1. Select a view.
  2. Click Edit.
  3. A dialog appears where you can edit the view name, source IP list, forwarder, and zone settings. See above for more details.

To delete views:

  1. Select the view you wish to delete.
  2. Click Delete.

View Priority

When a client sends a query, Synology NAS decides to which view the source address of the client belongs according to view priority. If a source address matches the criteria of two views, it will belong to the view with higher priority.

Suppose you have created three views for the following source addresses:

  • External network hosts
  • Regular local network hosts
  • Your personal host within the local network

The source address of your personal host matches the criteria of the latter two views. In this case, the view for your personal host should be given higher priority than the view for regular local network hosts. Otherwise, your personal host will be treated as a regular network host.

To edit view priority:

  1. Select the view you wish to change.
  2. Click Up and Down to change its priority.
View Management
View Priority