Having an internal DNS issue. we have a website hosted offsite. When I type in www.ourwebsite.com it works fine. However when I type in http://ourwebsite.com it does not. The http://ourwebsite.com works fine from the outside but not inside. So what am I missing? What DNS entry am I missing? Thanks much, D

Hello, in your DNS zone create an A record named "www" without the quotes and point to the internal ip address of the web server.Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Hi, You likely need to create an A record for your domain to point at the same IP as the web server (this will be on the internal DNS server). ex. domain.com. 3600 IN A X.X.X.X www.domain.com. 3600 IN A X.X.X.X -- Mike Burr

We have a www A record but it has the website/external IP address attached to it.

Mike, Not sure I understand. What's the "3600 IN A"? We currently have an entry in the DNS for www which is pointing to the external website IP address. I'm not sure why, internally, we can't get the page to come up with http://. currently, if I type in www.ourwebsite.com the browser puts the http:// in front of the www and the page comes up. If I type in http://ourwebsite.com I get the UnderConstruction page.

That's more of a notation used by BIND systems (specifically when you query using the dig command), essentially it is an A record that has a TTL of 1 hour. For the IIS issue, are you using host headers to identify which site you are accessing? Also, when you open a command prompt and do an nslookup of www.domain.com and domain.com, do they resolve to the same IP? -- Mike Burr

On the nslookup the addresses do not come back the same. the nslookup for www shows the external IP address. the nslookup for domain.com comes back with the 2 DC internal addresses. D

On your internal DNS zone for that domain, you need to create a parent record. Its just a blank record pointing to the IP of the webserver. Right click the zone name, new host record, do not fill in the host. In the new window, do not fill in the name, simply fill in the IP. Just as an FYI... if you are running Active Directory internally using this same external name, you will run into issues as the DCs register the domain name with their IPs. Active Directory Domain Name Considerations when Using the Same Internal and External Domain Name http://www.anitkb.com/2010/03/active-directory-domain-name.htmlVisit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

okay....that pretty much settles it. I think we can live with the www working and the http not. I really don't want to do a registry hack to get it work. It's an internal issue only. thank you all so very much for all your input. Kind regards, D

Hello d.l.t., That is exactly why I posted the summary link. This issue appears very common for those AD implementations that have the same internal/external name. By the way, the solution presented in the article is a supported "hack". It was provided to me by Microsoft Premier Support. However, I do agree with you...if you can live without it, it is preferrable than to put in a custom solution (registry edits) which may cause an unpredictable issue for you in the future. Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.