Tricky DNS Question

[ht6]

Currently we have an extra domain name configured on our internal DNS. This is for all our web services, all of which are internal except our website. By having this setup it means internal clients don't have to go out and back in to access an internal site. It means it's quicker, and also if we have ISP issues we don't lose internal services.

However, because our website is external, we can't currently access it internally using the domain name dn.com, as it looks to our internal DNS records, says "we don't have a record for this, get lost". I don't want to bring our website to internal hosting (just yet).

So, has anybody got any idea how I can configure our DNS so it looks internally for records for dn.com that it does have, but then goes off the internet to find the records (www.dn.com) that it doesn't have?

I've tried adding a forwarder to the external name server that holds the domain name, but that didn't seem to change anything.

[tmcd35]

How about creating a www.dn.com site on your internal domain that uses HTTP headers to auto-redirect to the external website?

[IrritableTech]

Can't you make a record that points to the websites public IP in your dns?

[ht6]

Can't you make a record that points to the websites public IP in your dns?

I think it's a shared public IP, so the public IP only takes us to the hosting server.

[IrritableTech]

But I'm pretty sure that would resolve. That's how shared hosting works. Try it!

[RabbieBurns]

yep just add the dn.com zone and add an A record for www.dn.com or whatever and it will work

[ht6]

Well pickle me like a beet. Cheers fellas

[glennda]

Well pickle me like a beet. Cheers fellas

Although its a shared server the server looks at the host headers (i.e what the browser says its looking for e.g www.dn.com) and displays the correct website.

What you may what to check is that your external doesn't point to a CName as this could mean that IP is likely to change (and they would change the cname) then you cannot resolve your website. Might not be the case but could be and any other users looking in the future.

[ht6]

Well, this was working fine when I first did it, but now I get an /Indexof page when I browse to DN.com

The external IP is still the same, it hasn't changed....

Baffled.

[ht6]

Any ideas? It's still not working

[dhicks]

Well, this was working fine when I first did it, but now I get an /Indexof page when I browse to DN.com

That sounds more like a web server issue - it sounds like your webserver doesn't know that your index.html file (or whatever) should be treated as the default file and is showing a directory listing instead. This could be because index.html is missing, or could be a permissions problem (if you uploaded an updated version of index.html, say, and didn't check the permissions). Of course, your default index file might be set to index.php or something instead, depending on your site.