creating a domain name for Winxp network

[jnxx]

I hope someone can help me with this, as i've been searching the net this whole morning, i also hope this is the right forum for this.

Basically, i have three comps all running Winxp and all fitted with Nics, ive allocate4d the ip addresses 192.168.0.1 - 3, no DHCP.What i would like to do is to create a (network)domain, NOTHING to do with internet.So i guess the questions are:

Can i create a domain for the network(using WinXP only), with the view to later create email addresses(with that domain) as well?

Also, i have both a pop3/SMTP server that iwant to use on the network, both of which require settings like "mail.mydomain.com". Can this be done with an internal network?

Would appreciate it if someone could perhaps point me in the right direction?

Cheers

 

[pansophic]

The mail.mydomain.com can be replaced with IP addresses. Or you can create a hosts file with static IP addresses tied to false domains, and if you have the same file on all of the hosts, the names will resolve to the internal IP addresses.


pansophic

 

[cyberspace]

The machines will need to be XP Pro to be able to be used in a domain environment.

What is the purpose of the setup?

Systems Administrator
BSc Network Computing, CCNA. Both in training!

 

[jnxx]

I want to use the network for testing internet/network applications that i create. So far, i've got both the POP3/SMTP servers and a mail client. What i wanted was a domain name, a local one, that i can use to for example create individual mailboxes for testing.

There are basically two issues here:
1. Is the domain, i want to use mshome.net as the domain for the network. How do i do this? Also, how do i assign it to three computers, compA/compB/compC?

The second issue is creating a single domain for both servers(POP3/SMTP) like 'mail.mshome.net' so that i can send email between the 3 comps'. Is this possible, and if so, how can it be done?
(I've partially solved the second issue, by just using an ip address, but i need to test these apps as much as possible and need to use both ip and domain)

Thanks

 

[drew1701d]

first of all you need Windows 2000/2003 to create a domain, if you don't have the server platform, your limited to a workgroup only. If you do have a Windows Server then name the domain whatever you want since your doing an internal deal..... acme.local mydomain.local are examples

 

[bcastner]

Edit with notepad the file %windir%\win32\drivers\etc\HOST

This is loaded into memory and takes precedence of your choice of DNS server.

Discussion:

http://www.accs-net.com/hosts/what_is_hosts.html

This essentially would gaurantee that 'mail.mshome.net' would resolve to your static local IP address.