Cannot access company web site from within SBS network 1

[bman80]

I have a customer who outsources their

http://www web

site seperately to their SBS network. Recently they have not been able to access their

http://www web

site from within their SBS 2003 network via http or ftp (receiving the error msg 'Website Unavailable'), but they are able to view everything else on the web just fine. Once outside of their network their web site can be viewed without a problem.
I have looked at the DNS settings but my expertise in this area is limited. I have been able to get a client PC to view their

http://www web

site by putting in the DNS addresses of their broadband provider in the PC but then they cannot access Exchange emails.
There is the possibility that an ex employee was tinkering with various system settings, but I have no idea how to unravel this.
Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[ShackDaddy]

This is a very simple problem to solve.

From an external host, ping "

http://www.yourdomain.com"

and get the IP address.

On your server, go into the DNS Manager via Administrator tools.

What's the name of the local SBS domain? I assume it's the same as the real public domain, like mycompany.com

Open up the Forward Lookup Zone folder and select the mycompany.com folder so you can see the records for the domain in the right pane.

Now right-click the mycompany.com folder and choose Create new A-record (or name record or something like that) from the context menu. Create a record for "www" and give it the real IP address of the public web site.

Now your internal clients should be able to reach the web site. You may need to do an "ipconfig /flushdns" on a couple of them if you want immediate access, otherwise they will all be fine in an hour or so.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[bman80]

Hi ShackDaddy, thanks for your help. I tried your suggestion. Whilst creating a new A-record I got the following warning message: 'The associated pointer (PTR) record cannot be created, probably because the refrenced reverse lookup zone cannot be found.'
I clicked okay then flushed the dns cache from a couple of PC's but still no luck. All I get is website unavailable.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Don't worry about the PTR record.

When you try and ping the website name from inside your network, what's the response? What IP does it resolve the name to? And is that the correct one for the public internet?

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[bman80]

Thanks ShackDaddy, I had the wrong IP address for the web site (the hosting server had been changed) and hence the A-record was pointing to the wrong site. Appreciate your help as otherwise I would have still been going round in circles.