Infrastructure:
We have one domain controller on Windows 2000 Server with a private address of 192.168.206.4, running DNS. We have an Exchange 5.5 server on NT 4.0 running DNS as well with an inside private address of 192.168.206.2, which is also running DHCP with a scope of 192.168.206.10 - .254. Our Proxy Server went down in December and we purchased a SonicWall 3060 box that serves as our firewall with an inside address of 192.168.206.3. The SonicWall, in the beginning, was configured for serving DHCP. (we'll get to that in a sec) Users had to be configured with DNS of our ISP for internet access (non-authoritative), but DNS IP address had to be placed in top/first order in front of internal DNS servers.
Monday this week, our Novell server locked up and went totally down. Shortly thereafter, almost all users had either 1) no internet, 2) no Novell, 3) no Email, or 4) no ERP / no printer (neither Novell NDPS printing or straight TCP/IP printing)...or, for the fortunate....all the above. The temporary fix seems to be to turn off DCHP from the SonicWall and also configure each user with a static IP address, giving the Sonicwall gateway internal and external addressing, giving all three DNS servers above with the ISP server first, and loading HOSTS and LMHOSTS files into each computer.
The result? Internet access. Novell was fixed on Tuesday. Email access is good. We're happy running on ERP (printing too). The problem.....internet access seems to drop off after an unknown amount of time (being that we have no way of knowing just how long it takes....for one user, it's a matter of rebooting, for another user...he's still up and running happy (Windows XP Home by the way). We have all flavors of Windows... 95/98/ME/2000/XP Home and Pro. Running the command IPCONFIG /REGISTERDNS on Windows XP and 2000 seems to temporarily fix this. On 95/98/ME, obviously this is not included, therefore if HOSTS and LMHOSTS don't work, they're screwed.
This is a DNS problem, it sounds....but what? Reverse lookups? How to get the internet firewall into DNS or at least a reference to it? Then there's Novell....some people still can't get get into Novell, but have Internet, Email, and ERP.... (don't ya just love working here? LOL)
Small company, no resources, and fussy users have led me to ask this 500 pointer...
Much thanks in advance,
DB12