DNS question regarding internal URL branding with public namespace

I am seeking advice for URL branding in our company. In DNS we have Our primary intenal DNS zone is oldcompany.corp.tld. Our public namespace is company.com. (Old company because it is the name of the company prior to acquisition).

I have a team of developers who wish to brand internal URLs for internal applications to something like http://appname.company.com that would match up with our external namespace (and company name).

Could it cause problems for internal users having a forward lookup zone with a namespace the same as our public facing namespace? Is there a better way to accomplish this?

Another potential issue is we plan on a complete Active Directory redesign next year. I don't want this to complicate that project. That project I do plan on using a sub domain of our public namespace.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

Don HarveyAsked: 2018-03-07

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LVL 42

MaheshArchitectCommented: 2018-03-07

what r asking is split dns system where same Zone exists internally and externally as well
it will not create any problems as long as you know all host records in that zone
if you are not managing this zone, it will create issue as zone getting updated by other and those changes will not be reflected in your internal zone and if user trying to access new records, they will not be resolved

LVL 18

IvanSystem EngineerCommented: 2018-03-07

Hi,

other way is to use pin-point zone, in which you would create zone in internal DNS like appname.company.com
So you would not create entire DNS zone company.com, but just for a single record.
That way you don't need to monitor what is going on in public DNS and to update your internal DNS all the time.

It maybe is not practical if you want to create really many records in internal zone, but for just few I think it is ok.

Regards,
Ivan.

LVL 27

DrDave242Commented: 2018-03-08

Could it cause problems for internal users having a forward lookup zone with a namespace the same as our public facing namespace?

Before you do this, check to see what URL or URLs your company's main website responds to. It's very common nowadays for public websites to respond to (for example) www.company.com and simply company.com. It's also common for sites to actually redirect requests from www.company.com to company.com.

You can see if this redirect is in place by browsing to www.company.com. When the main page opens, if the www disappears from the URL in the browser's address bar, it's being redirected.

If that redirect is in place, you'll need to create a blank host record in the internal company.com zone with the same IP address as the www host record you create in that zone, so that internal users will resolve both www.company.com and company.com to the address of the web server.

As you may have guessed, if your AD domain is named company.com, this causes a problem when internal users try to browse the website, but it doesn't sound like you're going to have that problem.

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