Cannot reach site by name, but can by IP. Please help!

[olegarr]

Hello everybody,
I have a problem and hope that somebody will help me.

We created new site for our company needs and put it on special inside domain ***.lan. Of course, we configure DNS and I hoped it should work. But I was wrong.

The problem is that some of our users cannot reach that site by its name. But they can reach it by IP address. If they will renew their settings (renew/all, we use DHCP) they will be able to reach site even by name. But after few hours they should renew settings again.

As usual users who have that's problem use WIN 2000. And those who are using WIN 98 don't have this problem at all. They can reach the site whenever they want without any problems and never should do "renew".

Of course I can add line with that site name and its IP in the hosts file for all computers and it will work but CEO said that we need do something else. Maybe here is the way how I can add simular line in WINS or DNS or somewhere else?

Rhight now I have no idea what I should do to resolve this issue?

So, can somebody help me please?

Thank you very much in advance,
Best regards.

 

[TektronixUser]

Hi,

I had the same problem, but this info should solve your problem, goto the link below

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6505394~root=equip,16~mode=flat

Let me know if this solves your problem.

 

[olegarr]

TektronixUser,

Thank you very much for your help. Unfortunately it did not help. Maybe because we have DHCP ("Obtain an IP address automatically&quot, but they are talking about situation when they give permanent IP.

Thank you in any case.
May be you have another ideas?

Best regards,
Olegarr.

 

[Ntr0P]

If you do a ping -a or to the FQDN from one of the problem machines, while it is having a problem, what is the IP address it resolves? Is it correct?

 

[TektronixUser]

OK ..... I had a little play here with my own Win2K Adv Server and installed DHCP to do some tests.

I take it that your DHCP server is a Win2K Server ?

If so, here is how I set it up.

1/ Follow the instructions by Yakup in my 1st post above (the link above).

2/ Set the DHCP server as shown above in the Server Options using the standard DHCP settings option but substitute your own server IP's for your DNS server (in-house), World Wide Web Server (in-house) and Router (in-house).

3/ The router acts as the Gateway and will be required.
NOTE: The router here in my network acts as my Gateway to the internet and all internal PC's.

4/ Reboot the server and release all IP's on clients with the ipconfig /release command and then renew them with the ipconfig /renew command.

5/ All clients should end up like the screenshot below (see bottom of screenshot).

This is my laptop that now gets it's IP from the DHCP Server and also all of the other IP's needed to be able to see sites by name (web address).

Feel free to ask questions if you run into problems.

Yours,

Ian.

 

[tetaguila]

maybe ur domain is not propagated yet it's jst a dns problem, try to install dns ip address to each computer tht will access ur internet connection, ur problem is no converting the ip address to a hostname so its really dns problem....

 

[olegarr]

TechnicalUser,

I am so sorry for so long silence but they sent me to bussines trip and I have no access to my network to test your advises.

Any case thank you very much for your help, but again for some reason it does not work for me.

I did exactly as you told me, and now I have the same settings what you have in your printscreens. But...

I will work few hours 2-3, but after that to reach site by name from machines under win2K we should do "renew" command. And again if I will try reach by IP - no problem. And also, no problems to reach the site by name from machines with Win98 (we have more than 10 those machines).

I noticed one interesting thing: in your configuration (see yours "ipconfig /all" printscreen) you don't have any record for "DNS Suffix Search List". But I do have it. So, If I do "ipconfig /all" I will see:
DNS Suffix Search List ....mydomain.com But, as you remember my site is under domain mydomain.lan. Maybe machine is trying to search under ...com, instead of ...lan. Maybe this is the issue? But if it's a issue, why I can reach site by name first 2 hours after renew? What do you think? How can I edit or delete or disable this option "DNS Suffix Search List"? In DHCP configuration I have the same configuration as you.

Thank you very much for you help,
Best regards,
Oleg

Tetaguila,

I agree with you maybe this it is DNS issue. But by defolt he correct DNS IP is in configuration. I mean if I will do "ipconfig /all" I will see my correct DNS.

To be honest with you I have no idea what else should I try.
Do you have any ideas?


Thank you,
Best regards,
Oleg

 

[sgscit]

Oleg,

I had a very similar problem. I found that I needed a caching DNS server.

In my investigations I found that if I did an ipconfig/flushdns it resolved the issue for a short while - so i knew it was DNS.

After a heap of investigation I simply installed w2ks on an old PC, installed DNS without any forward lookups.

In forwarders I put my internal root domain servers and my ISP's DNS server. Root servers are still active.

I have also turned off the dns suffix search order.

In DHCP I set the DNS to point to my cache server and now it all works a treat.

My set up now is 5 servers:
DNS controller for internal domain.
3 secondary DNS servers (3 major sites)
1 caching server.

My users point to 1 of the 3 secondary servers for DNS requests depending on what site they are on. The 3 secondaries have forwarders installed.
The forwarders point to my caching server which then goes to the Internet for any external addresses it does not know. I also put a forwarder to my primary server in my cache server to allow forward lookups of the internal domain from the cache server when doing nslookups.

I have it set up as above as previously I also had a second cache server to help with load as I had forwarders everywhere and all sorts of slow downs on DNS causing timeout. Soo with the above setup I was able to get rid of the second cache server.
Hope the info helps.

Pete

 

[olegarr]

Pete,

Thank you very much for your advise but I have one more question for you.

You wrote: I found that if I did an ipconfig/flushdns it resolved the issue for a short while - so i knew it was DNS.

But in my case this command IPCONFIG/FLUSHDNS does not help. Does it mean that it is not DNS issue?

Also I noticed that command IPCONFIG/REGISTERDNS helps for a short time. Does it mean that I have problem with DHCP? And if yes, than what should I change or add or remove or ...

Any ideas?

Thanks again,
Best regards,
oleg

 

[Ntr0P]

There really wouldn't be much of an issue with DNS unless it is incorrectly resolving the name for whatever reason.

This can easily be tested by pinging the domain name. It should return the IP address, and if this matches the IP address you know to be accurate, then DNS is not the issue. If however it does not match, it is time to start looking at DNS.