DNS

The server should be used for DNS as it is used to find resources on the domain assuming you are running Active Directory.  You could still use the router to give out DHCP addresses if you wish as long as it hands out the DNS pointing at your server.  

Personally I would run DHCP and DNS on the Windows 2003 box and leave the router to do routing.

Steve

The DNS on your server should then point at your router or ISP DNS servers as forwarder.

Steve

Yes, absolutely. I take it that you have an Active Directory Domain along with that? It would explain all the problems with slow startups and such.

The DNS running on your server is, by default, capable of finding out about hosts on the Internet so nothing really needs to be changed there unless you want to add things.

HTH

Chris

as dragon-it suggests this is far better than using your router for dns.

if you really want to you can configure the serve DNS to actually perform lookups via your router, but without an AD DNS server you will have real problems, speed being the least of them
:)

forget what you were advised, and listen to the man above!

I assume i have to setup DNS on the server to look at the ISP. can you let me know how to do this please?

Thanks

>>" assume i have to setup DNS on the server to look at the ISP. can you let me know how to do this please?"
Using Forwarders as above.

or even not bother - the Microsoft DNS server will obtain the root hints from the root servers, and resolve addresses without having to use your ISP's servers at all.

you may however be obligated to use your ISPs servers, in which case RobWill's note on forwarders stands.

regards,
Nick

I have done as you suggested (RobWill). everything works fine thanks .Except I can't access our website I can access all others, the website is hosted externally any ideas

By; "the website is hosted externally any ideas" do you mean an out side company like any other or on the DMZ of your router?
You could manually add an 'A' record to DNS, but if external it should resolve correctly. On a machine that cannot connect/resolve, try running at a command line:
 ipconfig  /flushdns
 ipconfig  /registerdns
then try
  nslookup  www.YourDomainName.xyz
and see if it resolves the IP.

If when installing Active Directory you named your Domain the very same name that is your registared Domain name then you will have a DNS resolution problem. You workstations will attempt to browes for the domain name 'www.yourdomain.com' on the Internet but will resolve to you server within you internal structure due to DNS pointing to the server that has the Active Directory domain listed as that's who it is. I suppose you could host your own Web on the IIS of the server and have your DNS records point to you public IP That may allow the internal empoyees to browes to your web and the rest of the world too.

hi, there

as long as you are sure on the DHCP scope that your clients only use your DNS server as the primary. No ISP dns on client pc.

be sure that only the External NIC card is the one with the ISP DNS on..... That should speed up things..

If not try the Microsoft Article regarding the Keberos TCP force...

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=244474

Cooledit

doranhatcher, has an excellent point. What are your AD/local domain and your web domain names. Substitute characters to remain anonymous if you like. Microsoft's "best practices" recommend you name your External/web domain something like www.xyzcompany.com and the internal/local domain name as www.xyzcompany.local  That would not be easy to change at this point, and I wouldn't recommend it, but I am sure someone will have a workaround for that, if this is your situation, it is fairly common.

depending on just how new this server build is and to amount of clients that are with in the network the easiest way I have found is to simply rebuild the domain environment by running DCPROMO and demoting the server and then once all the domain information is removed reboot and then run DCPROMO again renaming the domain in such a manner as to not have any internal browsing resolve to your server where the web is not currently hosted. When you demote the server you will loose all your users, groups, computers and policies that made up the Active Directory structure. demote the workstation to a work group recreate the users, groups and policies and rejoin the workstations and thins will be back on track.

I've never had much luck with the simple forwarding DNS record for resolution like this. Bind, DNS with Unix, works just that easy but DNS in Microsoft Active Directory hasn't been so cooperative with me on issues like these

doranhatcher-
i guess there could be problems if the webserver was using round robin dns for load balancing, but i have never had any problems using a simple staic IP, and we have done it dozens of times.

got to be worth a go hasn't it?

regards,
Nick

-nickhills
I want to try your idea first, but im not sure how to create the record. can you please let me know how to do it.

Cheers

Thanks doddwell,
--Rob