LAN-Tech Network Management

For simplicity there are many reasons you may want a single URL or FQDN to access a resource internal or external to your corporate domain.  If the internal and external domain names are the same it can sometimes cause DNS issues resolving the public domain name from the corporate network.  I am often asked about this in reference to web sites; “why is our website accessible from anywhere but our buisiness network””?”   For example you want to access www.net-works.ca from a network that uses the internal domain net-works.local.  The internal DNS server manages DNS for net-works so it doesn’t pass on the request to the forwarder, but it also doesn’t have a DNS record for the www Host.  The simple solution is to create an internal zone for the host name you are trying to access. SBS 2008/2011 did this automatically for “remote” so that the same URL could be used internally and externally.  This technique can be used for access ing websites, dvr systems, or anything you like that uses a FQDN.

To do so open the DNS management console, expand the folders under your server name, right click on the “Forward Lookup Zones folder, and select New Zone.  A wizard starts, click next and you can select the zone type.  Accept the defaults, Primary Zone and next.

Select “To all DNS servers running on domain controllers in this domain”.

In this case I am going to set up a universal URL for access to a DVR system, so I will enter dvr.net-works.ca  This could be www, remote, or what ever meets your needs.  Keep in mind for external access you must set up the DVR, or matching,  Host record with whichever service manages DNS for your public domain.

Again accept defaults, and click next, and finish.

Now right click on the new zone folder and choose “New Host (A or AAAA)” record. Finally, again accept defaults except insert the IP address.  In this case it is an internal IP.  There should be no need for a PTR record creation.

When complete it should look similar to this: