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Web requests being intercepted by local server using the same domain

I think have a Windows 2008 Server that must be intercepting web traffic and returning a 404 Page Not Found error. The local domain for the server and workstations is setup to the same domain as our website.

To view our website, you must type in WWW.ourdomain.com. Just typing in ourdomain.com does not work.

Also, we cannot access any other prefixes when connected to our network (mail.ourdomain.com, mysql.ourdomain.com, etc). If I go somewhere else (home, Starbucks, etc), I can access these prefixes without any problem.

Is there a way I can tell our server to pass through this traffic instead of intercepting it?

Ryan McCauley

The problem is likely with your DNS configuration - if the local domain in your office is ourdomain.com, then any request a client makes for that name will get them the IP address of your domain controller (or one of them). The reason WWW.ourdomain.com gets you to your website is that there's no computer on your domain called WWW, so it resolves that full name correctly as your website's IP address.

I assume your web host is external to the company - some hosted site. Though this is a bit hackey, one option you have is to set up a basic web server on your DC that listens to port 80 and just forwards requests to www.ourdomain.com. That way, the initial request for ourdomain.com will end up at the DC, which will send it to your website. Since you'll only be forwarding port 80 requests (web traffic), this won't affect any other network services.

rcctech

ASKER

Yep, that sounds pretty accurate. Will that allow me access the prefixes I need? mail. and mysql. ? I'm in the DNS settings on the server, but it's not obvious to me how I set up the forwarding. How could I do that?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Ryan McCauley

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