I can't stop DNS & URL acting strangely. 1

[Decade]

I manage a number of websites under a particular domain and I frequently test the sites for web accessibility outside the office in which they are hosted.

The problem I am having is that I can never get any of the sites to load after the first time I type in the URL. I always get

http://search.msn.co.uk/

saying that it cannot find the URL. Strangely, the moment I hit refresh or type-in the URL again, the site is immediately found and loaded as it should have been the first time.

I've done the ping/DNS tests and they all work.
Other than a Linux firewall performing port forwarding between the web server and the internet, I have no idea why this continues to happens.

 

[fluid11]

What OS? If its Windows 2K or XP, maybe you have to refresh the DNS Resolver Cache first.

ipconfig /flushdns

If its Linux, try restarting the network on the client....

/sbin/service network restart

Is this from multiple computers or just one?

ChrisP ---------------------------------------
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[Decade]

When I test the sites with a machine just outside the firewall on the same subnet, everything works fine. But it continues to occur on any machine that is accessing the site through the internet. I've tried this using web browsers on both the Linux and Win2K operating systems, with the same results each time.
Refreshing the cache has no effect on the situation and it still takes at least two attempts for a browser to find the site(s).
One of the sites is also being monitored remotely through the InternetSeer service which has given no indication of an access problem.

The primary DNS server I manage has been registered correctly and configured to notify its 3 secondaries that each reside on different subnets.
Are there any other special DNS settings I need to change?
How many other foreign DNS servers do I have to use as secondaries before the sites get found as easily as Yahoo or Google in any browser?

 

[fluid11]

Maybe your external DNS servers are overloaded? Do you manage the external DNS servers?

Chris ---------------------------------------
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[Decade]

The external secondary DNS servers are managed by another company. They do not seem to be overloaded, but then they recently do not appear to be accepting any information being transferred from the primary. NSLOOKUP tests on the external servers does not give any of the information I can find on my primary.

I hope I'm right in thinking that I have to contact the company hosting the external DNS to get their servers to accept zone information from my primary.

 

[fluid11]

Is your primary DNS server accessible from the internet? It sounds like you host your own external primary DNS server and another company hosts your external secondary DNS servers for your domain. Have your secondaries ever worked? The other company will have to set up the secondary zones on their server(s) and allow transfers from your primary. If this is not happening, you will have to contact them.

ChrisP ---------------------------------------
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