Question

Windows 2003 DNS lookups for unknown domains always go to the same IP

Asked by: steiner470

I have a windows 2003 server running active directory and is also a DNS server. My domain name is domain.com. Whenever I do a lookup (for example nslookup or ping) for an unknown host it always returns the same IP address: 67.15.97.37

For example if I say:

Ping asdhasgdjkh

I get:

Pinging domain.com [ 67.15.97.37] with 32 bytes of data

reply from.... time 70ms ttyl118
etc

If I add a trailing dot at the end of the nonsense host then it fails appropriately. This is messing me up because I'm trying to do pings to check for live hosts and if the host doesn't exist the ping still succeeds. How I can I fix this?

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Asked On
2009-11-04 at 14:13:45ID24872730
Tags

Windows server 2003 DNS

Topics

Domain Name Service (DNS)

,

Windows 2003 Server

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: LingerLongerPosted on 2009-11-04 at 14:17:58ID: 25744627

Do you have a * entry in your DNS for that IP?

 

by: debuggerauPosted on 2009-11-04 at 14:19:35ID: 25744642

sounds like you have a network redirector working within your org..



 

by: steiner470Posted on 2009-11-04 at 14:27:32ID: 25744732

No I can't find a * entry anywhere. I can't even see any entry anywhere with that IP. If I do a reverse lookup on it I get: mail8.ourmailservers.net which doesn't look familiar.

 

by: ChiefITPosted on 2009-11-04 at 14:59:09ID: 25745001

Where are you performing your pings or NSLookups:

If on a client, look on that client's HOST file.

Also see if all your client machines produce the same results.

DNS troubleshooting made easy might help you:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/Networking/Protocols/DNS/DNS-Troubleshooting-made-easy.html

 

by: steiner470Posted on 2009-11-05 at 10:17:32ID: 25752263

Nevermind, I figured it out. Apparantly dns queries are first automatically sent using the domain suffix, ie. nslookup asdasdasd is checked first as asdasdasd.domail.local

Since our local dns server didn't have a record for that it went on to check the external dns server, which redirected to our www nameserver which DID have a * entry for domain.lccal and was thus returning the IP address of our www server.

What I still don't quite understand is how then does any other REAL domain get resolved correctly? If I lookup www.yahoo.com it must first go and check www.yahoo.com.domain.local so why doesn't that resolve to the same address as well?

 

by: debuggerauPosted on 2009-11-05 at 14:26:30ID: 25754780

yes, the dns query does include the originating domain, but it is stripped out if it is found on that domains DNS server, if not, it then tries to find it by forwarding it onto the next forwarder in the chain for resolution, while maintaining the domain suffix.

So blabla.domain.com.yahoo.com will resolve to the forwarder service.
and blablabla will try to resolve locally, using the current domain.

If your query resolved externally, you may be using a generic name, as .local are not normally cached externally via ISP's.

Also, you can change your default query domain name within nslookup, use set domain=domain.com.



 

by: ChiefITPosted on 2009-11-05 at 15:06:13ID: 25755095

Again, this article explains the steps a DNS query takes, from the client to the top-level domain controller.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/Networking/Protocols/DNS/DNS-Troubleshooting-made-easy.html

 

by: LingerLongerPosted on 2009-11-06 at 08:05:10ID: 25760307

There was a * entry in the external DNS lookup. I discovered it after tracing the nslookup past our local dns server onto the external nameserver.

Wasn't this what I suggested at the outset? Points to me?

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