DNS Question

m4cc45 · 18 Oct 2006 at 21:25

Hi All

I have inherited a network and it's very slow connecting to the Internet.

We have a DHCP and DNS server so I added the external DNS entries to the server so every client PC has an external DNS along the lines of:

64.x.x.134
64.x.x.135
192.168.0.1 (the servers IP)

However as you can imagine if you try and join a PC to the domain although it can see the server it won't join as the DNS doesn't seem to allow it to get there - if I change it to 192.168.0.1 on it's own it works fine however the Internet then runs slow.

I'm running Windows 2003 Server and Windows 2003 SBS as well.

Any ideas what to look for?

M.

killsta · 18 Oct 2006 at 21:29

Is the DNS server on 192.x.x.1 set to forward requests to anywhere?

marc2003 · 18 Oct 2006 at 21:32

just point all clients primary dns server address to 192.168.0.1

that's all you have to do. the dns server built into windows 2003 will resolve any internet addresses and pass them onto the clients.

(not worded very well but hopefully you understand....

)

killsta said:
Is the DNS server on 192.x.x.1 set to forward requests to anywhere?

you don't need forwarding. root hints takes care of resolving external ip addresses.

Fr0dders · 18 Oct 2006 at 21:32

whats the issue here

not being able to access the internet or not able to get on the network ?

you mention in your post about the PC refusing the join the network, thats separate to DNS server issues is it not ?

killsta · 18 Oct 2006 at 21:35

marc2003 said:
j
you don't need forwarding. root hints takes care of resolving external ip addresses.

That's not what I was getting at. My point was that if it was set to forward requests to another (slow) DNS server then it would result in slow lookups on the client.

m4cc45 · 18 Oct 2006 at 21:41

The problem is that if I point it to 192.168.0.1 it does eventually resolve the address but it's damn slow.

If you give it the external DNS then it's like lightning but internally there are issues (obviously fixed by pointing it back to 192.168.0.1)

I wondered if there was any further configuration needed other than the default settings?

ColdFusion · 18 Oct 2006 at 22:05

You have misconfigured your dns server. simple as that.

All clients within the domain need to point to the primary (and if installed) secondary dns servers. Usually no other. You say you have a dhcp server so just use that to sort it out.

Make sure you have setup the default gateway correctly on the server and just enable forwarders. Test it by setting the dns server's primary address to itself and then run an nslookup.

m4cc45 · 18 Oct 2006 at 22:47

Sadly I have inherited the server.

No mis-configuration from myself just trying to find out what the hell has been done to it to make it run this slow.