W2K SRVR DNS Question (we host a site...not sure how to setup DNS..)

[DSect]

Hello -

We host a web server @ our office. The domain that we own is mydomain.org (not really, but it's a good example).

Here's some other facts:

1. We currently use our host's DNS servers for name resolution and they have a DNS record in their system for mydomain.org which points back to our firewall (to our webserver).

2. We are using NT and would like to go to Win2K, but are having a little trouble understanding a few things w/ DNS in our environment.

Questions:

1. This is basic question, but when we create a W2K DC, we are supposed to use our "internic assigned domain name", which is mydomain.org as the domain name, correct? I'm very sure of that, but want to re-affirm.


2. Is my ActiveD/DC/DNS server supposed to resolve to my domain name? Like - if I'm ON the DNS server (with an IP of 192.168.0.1) and I type "ping mydomain.org", it replies from 192.168.0.1 which is the server's address. Since we run a website, if I ping mydomain.org I would expect it to resolve to the firewall/webserver's PUBLIC IP address. Is this normal - that the server itself resolves mydomain.org to itself and am I able to have mydomain.org resolve to my firewall/webserver's public IP?

Hmm.. That's it for now. I'm very new to DNS (past CNAME records) and I want to swap server OS's this weekend, if I can get DNS squared.

I guess my biggest concern is: We use our host's DNS servers to resolve outside domain names and our local Win2K AD/DNS server will resolve intranet requests. If that's the case, then shouldn't pinging mydomain.org from the AD DNS server give me a response from the PUBLIC IP that we've registered and have DNS records set for on our host's DNS servers?

Ack.. Sorry for the babble as I am more than slightly confused about this.

Any good step-by-step guides would be wonderful, especially one that uses the site structure we have which is:

WEBSERVER (hosts a website for the world)
DB SERVER
AD / DNS SERVER

All nodes/servers have private IP's (192.168.*.*) and the firewall maps public traffic to ports 80 and 443 on the WEBSERVER.

Welp. I'm not sure where to go from here, but any help would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if I need to clarify things. I am confused because we are using a domain name which the world resolves mydomain.org to a certain IP, but when my AD/DNS server was up, it resolved mydomain.org to itself.

VIA a forwarder, I was able to get outside sites.

Thakns again!

 

[themaster1971]

An answer for question 2 your firewall translates the ip address of the web host i.e. if your internet address is 236.100.3.4 for example this will point the internet to your firewall which knows the 192.168 etc address of the web host this process is part of GNAT.

Check the how to's in the win2k server help these have a section on checklists that may help good luck!

 

[DSect]

If you can answer this, it would help me much..

An abstract example:

Microsoft sets up an AD & DNS server which is NOT a webserver. They name their domain "microsoft.com".

Microsoft has a website hosted on a server at "microsoft.com" and registered the name with NSI and their ISP's DNS entries point microsoft.com to Microsoft's webserver.

A Microsoft employee pings "microsoft.com" - What do they get as a response? Does the response come from the AD / DNS server or does it come from the WEB server?

From my testing, the response would come from the AD / DNS server that holds the zone file for Microsoft.com

I think I'm missing something and will read more ASAP.

Thanks in the meantime!