Domain name the same as the website name 2

[PiMMeL]

Hello,

I have just set up a new network for a customer and thought it might be nice to give their domain name the same name as their website (domain.com). BUT I now found that because the server is an AD + DNS server they can't connect to their website outside the network anymore. How do I tell the DNS server to go to the outside website if they type in

http://www.domain.com

instead of thinking the server is this address?

Thank you,

Pim

 

[dankelt]

Create an A record for

http://WWW that

points to your external webserver. That way domain.com will still point to your Internal Domain controller and

http://www.domain.com

will go elsewhere.

Dan

 

[PiMMeL]

Hi,

Thanx for the quick reply.
I will do more research on how to add an A record to my DNS server. or do you have any handy documents on how to do that in a W2K DNS Server?

Thanx again...

Pim

 

[vesselescape]

open administrative tools > dns
double click on "domain.com"
right click on right hand panel
click on "new host"
in dialog box that opens enter:
"

http://www"

in name box
the ip address of the website in the "ip address" box
check "create associated pointer record"
click ok
new record should now be showing in the right panel, and

http://www.domain.com

should now send you to the website rather than
the local domain.

 

[AjayM]

I had this problem as well the first time I setup a Win2k AD. It haunted me for the rest of the time I was keeping it alive. I could set an A record to

http://www.domain.com,

and an A record to mail.domain.com, etc. That worked with no problems.

But I had people who would open a browser and try to go to domain.com and not get anywhere. Or somebody would try and be smart and put domain.com in their mail settings (mail and webserver were offsite) and it wouldn't work. Then you have to explain why, or you would have the "know it all" person explain how they've been able to do that at other companies, etc.

Andrew

 

[dankelt]

You can work around that also. All you need to do is setup a website on your domain controller in IIS, and have it just redirect to

http://www.domain.com.

This is done under the "Home Directory" tab of the IIS Admin MMC. Just choose "A redirection to a URL" instead of "A directory located on this computer".

Hope this helps!
Dan

 

[AjayM]

That's what I finally ended up doing, didn't solve the problem of people every once in awhile setting up their own email account, but that was far less often than the other problems.

Now when I setup a Win2k domain I just setup a name structure like I would have in NT4, it's just not worth the hassle.

Andrew

 

[zoeythecat]

Wouldn't adding the ISP's IP address to the "Forwarders" tab in DNS resolve users issues connecting to the Internet? Yes, adding the "A" record, but you also need to add the ISP to the forwarders tab to help resolve issues connecting to the Internet

 

[dankelt]

If you don't add your ISP's DNS servers to the forwarders tab your DNS server will just use the ROOT servers. It should work either way.

 

[zoeythecat]

Then how would a client resolve getting out to the Internet?

 

[zoeythecat]

Just to offer another suggestion. If he didn't delete the "." zone then his clients would not get out to the Internet. This "." needs to be deleted so he enter the IP Address of the ISP in the forwarders tab. He needs to do this to allow the client PCs to resolve to the ISP.

 

[dankelt]

The client makes a request for domain.com to the local DNS server, if it cannot answer the request it passes it to the root servers. The root servers then looks up who is responsible for domain.com, then passes that info back to your dns server, your dns server then asks the server responsible for domain.com for the ip address of domain.com
This all works as long as you have an updated list of root servers on your local DNS server.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[zoeythecat]

I guess that makes sense to a degree. The key words would be if the root server is updated. If the root server is the default root server with default entries then I assume this would not work right? I've always thought (from articles that I have read on Microsofts website) that you need to delete the "." zone.

Check out this FAQ article from Microsoft's website:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;291382

One of the questions (listed below) notes why the "." zone should be deleted or you may not be able to resolve external name resolution.

Question: What is the "." zone in my forward lookup zone?

Answer: This setting designates the Windows 2000 DNS server to be a root hint server and is usually deleted. If you do not delete this setting, you may not be able to perform external name resolution to the root hint severs on the Internet.

 

[nettamer]

I am setting up an inhouse network including win2K server, DNS server, and Exchange 2000 server. I am debating whether internal and external domain name should be the same. I see the benefit of using two different ones as stated above. However, will the Exchange 2000 users have any problems if the internal domain name is different from the internet domain name? How will this affect authentication to receive internet emails?

 

[wbg34]

No the exchange users shouldn't have a problem as long as the dns entries for both the internal name and external name contain the correct ip address.

 

[dankelt]

zoeythecat, you are right about the "." zone. The "." zone means that your DNS server is a root server, therefor it will not look to other root servers for dns queries. If you have a "." zone, your dns may not work.