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Looking for a little help here.

I have a Windows 2003 DNS Server set up on our network. Lately computers on our LAN have been, at times, unable to resolve a certain sub domain for our website whereas other times the request is resolved just fine. During these periods of "downtime" all other network activity (i.e web sites, internal resolutions, network shares, etc.) remains normal. I can tell it is a problem with our DNS server because the resolution always works from outside our network.

I'm hoping someone out there has experienced something similar or could at least offer me place to start troubleshooting. Thanks!

  • Are the clients configured to use only your internal DNS server? Is the sub-domain an internal zone on your DNS server? – joeqwerty Jan 27 '10 at 23:23
  • The clients use the internal DNS server as the primary and our ISP's DNS as secondary. The sub-domain is not part of the internal network at all. The sub-domain resolution is handled by the same ISP whose DNS we use. –  Jan 27 '10 at 23:29

2 Answers2

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OK, first things first: Configure the internal clients (including the DNS server itself) to use only the internal DNS server. Then you can configure the internal DNS server to use the ISP's DNS servers as forwarders if you like. Clear the DNS server's DNS server cache and clear it's DNS client cache for good measure.

After that you can use a tool like DNSStuff's DNS report (not free) or CheckDNS.net to check the sub-domain and see if any errors\issues are reported (DNSStuff's report is a lot more comprehensive than CheckDNS.net and it's a pretty minimal fee to sign up).

joeqwerty
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Did you check the domain name from the command line? What error did your server respond with?

Also, do all other domains resolve fine during the 'downtime' period? Is the DNS server in question authoritative for the domains you are trying to resolve?

You can try to restart the windows DNS service next time it happens and see if it resolves the issue. Also, see if the DNS is showing any errors in windows logs about this.

yayim
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