Server 2003 DNS Error.

[Simon Poulton]

Hi all
I'm having this strange problem with server 2003. It runs as the internet gateway but refuses to resolve some internet Ip's if they have a name infront of the website.com bit. An example is Mcafee's website download.mcafee.com will not resolve and as such I cannot get my antivirus to update on any of the machines. The only way around this seems to be to use an Internet IP resolver to get the IP then set it up in the Server's DNS under a new forward lookup zone "mcafee.com" it works fine after that but really isnt what I want to have to do since it's a pain. Any suggestions? It uses ICS to provide internet access.

[mdaoud]

hi Simon
if u use ADSL connection i suggest to put your ISP DNS in forward lookup zone and alternate DNS in your LAN connection
and please check your windows firewall
good luck

[Rune J. Winje · Accepted solution]

If you have a DNS server that is autoritative for your internal network, then this DNS server should normally use an external (ISP DNS or other internet DNS server) to forward lookups for "All other DNS Domains". This is configured on the DNS server properties.

To make forward lookup zones for all external internet zones is not someting you should do... The very point of a DNS server is that it answers requests for the zones you are administrator of - and otherwise forward requests to internet DNS servers for name resolution.

Make sure you have not defined the "." (root) zone in your DNS server...

Use logging in DNS server or NSLOOKUP or DNSLint (MS tool) to troubleshoot your configuration.


Cheers,
Rune

[Simon Poulton]

The root is not defined in DNS. This problem only seems to occur when the IP address for the website is different than the root. so these forums are fine since the ip address is the same as hp.com, but mcafee's website has a different ip address for download.mcafee.com than the home page mcafee.com

This problem is really beginning to bug me now

[Rune J. Winje]

Well, NSLookup should show you how this is resolved (or not).

Do something like the following from the command line:

>ipconfig /flushdns
(this flushes the local DNS cache so answers will not come from that)
>nslookup
>set d2
(set d2 outputs detailed info about the answer)
>download.mcaffee.com
(the record you are queryging about)

Then in the answer you should see something like
======================
...
------------
------------
Got answer (125 bytes):
HEADER:
opcode = QUERY, id = 3, rcode = NOERROR
header flags: response, want recursion, recursion avail.
questions = 1, answers = 1, authority records = 2, additional = 1

QUESTIONS:
download.mcaffee.com, type = A, class = IN
ANSWERS:
-> download.mcaffee.com
type = A, class = IN, dlen = 4
internet address = 66.98.242.165
ttl = 14400 (4 hours)
AUTHORITY RECORDS:
-> mcaffee.com
type = NS, class = IN, dlen = 25
nameserver = ns1.freeredirection.net
ttl = 14400 (4 hours)
-> mcaffee.com
type = NS, class = IN, dlen = 6
nameserver = ns2.freeredirection.net
ttl = 14400 (4 hours)
ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
-> ns2.freeredirection.net
type = A, class = IN, dlen = 4
internet address = 67.15.11.100
ttl = 113156 (1 day 7 hours 25 mins 56 secs)

------------
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: download.mcaffee.com
Address: 66.98.242.165
======================================



Cheers,
Rune