DNS Issue viewing external site

[Enkrypted]

Hey all, I'm having an issue with my company's website. We are running on a domain and AD is active. The domain is named mycompany.local. When trying to view the external website which is mycompany.com, it cannot be viewed internally.

I've read up on this issue before and people say to create a new A record under the Forward lookup zone with the IP of the .com site. I have done that and it still does not allow users to view the site externally. I haven't found any other information stating why it does not work or what to do if that does not work.

Right now I currently have the IP entered into the hosts file on a couple workstations and have the users set to local machine admins. That appears to work for the time being, but I would like to not go that route if possible.

Any suggestions??

Using SBS 2003 if that helps at all

Enkrypted
A+

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Where is Mycompany.com web-site hosted?

 

[Enkrypted]

Hosted by a seperate hosting company.

Enkrypted
A+

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Then I would say that it is not the same issue where you would have to setup a Host record on your DNS server. This usually occurs when your private namespace (AD) and public namspace are the same. Example, you AD namespace is MyCompany.com and your public namespace is MyCompany.com. Since you are known privately as MyCompany.local - you would not see this issue, as far as namespace.

Couple of things to look at:
1. Make sure you host record for MyCompany.com is resolving from the Internet.
2. Check your Private DNS for a Host record or Zone that was created for MyCompany.com. It may be point to an old address. You should not need this if the Host record for MyCompany.com is resolvable on the Internet DNS Servers.

 

[lgarner]

Did you set up mycompany.com as a zone on your DNS servers? I'm a little confused by your phrasing "create a new A record under the Forward lookup zone with the IP of the .com site".

The mycompany.com zone must exist, and that's where you put the A record for mycompany.com and any hosts in it. If you're putting the address under mycompany.local, that's why it won't work.

 

[lhuegele]

And if you did create a forward lookup zone for mycompany.com and created the

http://www A

record for it, make sure you have your users flush their DNS cache, and also clear the cache on the DNS server.

Good luck

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

From what was described the issue has to do with the clients internal network.
- Internally do an nslookup for Mycompany.com to verify which DNS server is resolving the host record.

When trying to view the external website which is mycompany.com, it cannot be viewed internally.

This statment leads me to believe Internet access to the site is not a problem. This is why I asked if there was a Zone created on the private DNS, as it may be misconfigured causing the issue for internal users.

The mycompany.com zone must exist, and that's where you put the A record for mycompany.com and any hosts in it. If you're putting the address under mycompany.local, that's why it won't work.

True, a record must exist to do name resolution; but I had trouble with this statement as it makes it sound like a zone and host record are required on the private DNS. This is not the case. Since Internet access is avialable and the site is being managed by a hosting site, I would say it safe to say that a host record for the site already exists somewhere on an External DNS server.

I really can't think of a good reason why I would create a Zone for mycompany.com on my private DNS server?

 

[Enkrypted]

Sorry it took so long to get back to this topic.

Just for clarification, there is a Forward lookup zone for mycompany.com. I checked the A record in there for the record that points to the website and the IP address is the one for the externally hosted website.

I have removed the zone and there is still no connectivity to the externally hosted website.

Enkrypted
A+

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Just to clarify, your internal users can surf the web?
Your site is available to internet users?
Is it possible that you can connect by using

http://www.mycompany.com

and not mycompany.com (without the

http://www)?

It may be that a host record without the

http://www needs

to be added to the DNS server on the internet. Usually managed by your hosting vendor.



From a command prompt do the following.
c:\nslookup mycompany.com
-also do the following
c:\nslookup

http://www.mycompany.com

If there is a host record on the Internet you should see something similar to this:

Server: YourDNS ServerName
Address: Its IP Address

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: myCompany.com or

http://www.myCompany.com

Address: The public IP Address of your web server

The Non-authoritative answer would be a DNS Server on the Internet.

If what you see is different from above. Post it...

Are you able to Ping mycompany.com or

http://www...

and does it return the public IP?