Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of MACROLEVEL
MACROLEVELFlag for United States of America

asked on

How to setup W2K3 DNS server to open my own WEB page from server in Internet

Hello,

When I did setup of domain controller on Windows 2003 R2 Standard, I gave, say, example.com as name of my domain. Right now I can open any orher page in Internet but not my own, which is hosted on another server somewhere in the world. What should I change on my server so when I type  www.example.com (I will replace this example.com with real domain name) I can see my own web page?

Thank you.
Avatar of Brian Pierce
Brian Pierce
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

You don't add any entry to your DNS Server, if you have entries pointing to your www.example.com site you must remove them.

Check a couple of thing first. Make sure forwarding is enabled on your own DNS servers
Open up the DNS Console
First of all if you have a '.' (root) zone listed in your forward lookup zones then delete it.
Next right click on the DNS Server and select the 'Properties' option and go to the 'Forwarder' tab
In this make sure you have added the IP address(es) of your ISP's internet DNS servers.

Make sure that all of your clients, including the DNS server itself, points to your DNS server for its 'Preferred DNS Server'

If this iss all OK and you can connect to other web sites the problem must be with the internet DNS reccord for your web site. As you say it is hosted 'somewhere in the world' I am assuming that it is hosted with an ISP or hosting company. To locate your own web site, it must have an entry in an internet DNS. This is the responsibility of the company hosting the site. Contact your ISP or the company that hosts your web site and ensure that they have made the necessary entry. Once this is done you should be able to go to your own site just like any other.
Avatar of MACROLEVEL

ASKER

KCTS:

I do not have any forwarders set, because I red that it is not necessary, and there is no problem to open any other web page. My own Web site is hosted on another server and it is up and runnings since 2005, and it was accessible from my computer before I did server setup. The problem is that I used example.com as domain name and perhaps now my own DNS server is trying to open this page on my server. It looks like I have to explain to my DNS server that example.com, www.expample.com, http://www.example.com are located on another server in Internet and it should read this address from another DNS server.

Here is some info about my setup and what I did couple hours ago:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/22471420/Can't-go-online-from-workstation-just-installed-W2K3-with-AD-DHCP-and-DNS.html
Maybe this is the reason why by default domain name is something like example.local when you setup AD.... But I am sure that there is a way how to setup it.
Hi

you might have to add a www CNAME entry into your internal dns server for your website. Point the CNAME to your the FQDN of the server hosting your website

Right click in your DNS zone: select new alias: alias is www, FQDN is the name of your web server


(PS using your external public domain name as your internal windows domain is not recommended practice)

  Trev
2 suggestionstick:

I asked before about recommended domain name here:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/22399988/What-correct-domain-name-should-I-use-in-W2K3.html

for that reason I went with example.com ...

"Point the CNAME to your the FQDN of the server hosting your website". I know the IP of server where my site is hosted along with another sites with the same IP address... But still can't understand how to setup this on my DC...
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Zenith63
Zenith63

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Zenith63
Zenith63

Oh and you may need to do "ipconfig /flushdns" from the command line of your PC before it will work, or wait a few hours for the DNS records to expire and drop out of the cache of the PC automatically...
2 Zenith63:

Thank you, your solution work, I will accept it.

It is not too late to choose different name for my AD domain, because maybe I will reinstall W2K3 server. I can't use example.local because I have Apple Macs in my network, so it should be something else, but what? Any sugestions?
It doesn't really matter, you can set it to pretty much anything once it's not a website you want to access.  example.loc maybe.
Hi

If you don't change your AD setup, I recommend that you use a CNAME DNS entry rather than an IP address host entry, incase your hosting company changes the IP address of the web server in the future.
If you know the IP address of the server where your website is hosted, try the following to get the FQDN for that server.

from command line
nslookup "the IP address of your web server" "IP address of an external DNS server (such as your ISP's DNS server)"
the returned response will contain the FQDN that you require after the line begining with "Name: "

example

nslookup 66.102.7.104 x.x.x.x
******************
******************

Name:    mc-in-f104.google.com               <- this line will be your web servers FQDN
Address:  66.102.7.104


then

click start -> administrative tools >  dns
expand the "forward lookup zone" node and select your example.com zone, then in the right hand pane, right click and select "NEW ALIAS".

for alias name enter www.
for FQDN enter "FQDN of web server that you found using nslookup above ".

click OK and test.

Trev