owa from inside and outside our network

[woodlee]

I am new to this and have been asked this question which i haven't got a clue how to resolve.

my boss would like to be able to type in a web browser our public ip address (1.2.3.4/exchange) and access owa currently this works when you are anywhere in the world except in our office.

when in the office we just get page cannot be displayed.

if i type the internal address of the server 9.8.7.6/exchange it works fine. but he wants to be able to use our public address for both in our office and away from our office.

another note which i'm not sure is relevent is our domain is a .local domain name.

any help with this would be great.

Many Thanks

lee

 

[Zelandakh]

You shouldn't use the public IP, that's why they invented DNS...

Tell him the FQDN for OWA then create a split brain DNS internally and point the FQDN to your internal IP for OWA.

 

[woodlee]

Hi Zelandakh

we don't have a fqdn as we are .local on our domain.
my boss has an iphone and would like to access owa from it if he is at home he types our external ip followed by /exchange (1.2.3.4/exchange) and get a logon prompt to his mailbox.

Rather than him then type the internal address for the server followed by /exchange (192.168.42.2/exchange)when he is in the office he would like to be able to use the same details as he uses from home.

Is this possible?

 

[58sniper]

You should still have a FQDN for it externally. Then, as Zelandakh mentioned, use split brain DNS with a matching internal forward lookup zone. Users would then use the same

https://mail.yourdomain.com/exchange

to get to OWA whether internally or externally.

Also, you can do simple redirection so that users don't have to include the "/excange" part of the URL.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[woodlee]

hi 58sniper
how can i find out our fqdn. As you can guess this is all beyond me

 

[58sniper]

Look up your MX record. Does it point to your public IP address? If so, what happens when you browse to it in IE and add /exchange on the end? Such as

https://mail.yourdomain.com/exchange

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[NortonES2]

your email address will be 123@abc.com or similar. The abc.com is your external domain, whoever manages this for you will be able to create the required DNS entry and whoever manages your internal DNS can create the required record there.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[58sniper]

If the MX record points to the same public IP address that OWA uses, there isn't a requirement to create another external record (since one already exists).

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[NortonES2]

Very true, though in our case we have a separate mail gateway which the MX points to.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[Zelandakh]

Technically you could have an MX record without an A record in which case it would fail.

 

[58sniper]

Techically, yes. But that would violate the RFC, IIRC.

In a small shop, it's often a single IP being used, and thus, a single A record. No technical need to create another one that points to the same address.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[Zelandakh]

Agreed. Let's hope the OP has a managed domain courtesy of an ISP who has done that!