new wpad setup not working

[pritchardavid]

Hi there guys

 

I have created a wpad file and named it wpad.dat as required. Saved this on our webserver. Then put the settings for this in DHCP

 

Settings = 252, named wpad, string = http://www.theockendonacademy.com/wpad.dat

 

 

This is what is inside our wpad file

 

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)

{

// variable strings to return

var proxy_yes = "PROXY cache.thurrock.tbn:8084";

var proxy_no = "DIRECT";

if (shExpMatch(url, "*.theockendonacademy.com")) { return proxy_no; }

// Proxy anything else

return proxy_yes;

}

 

 

 

Any ideas why its not working?

 

I did this to see if I can get to the wpad file via http://www.theockendonacademy.com/wpad.dat and http://ipaddressofserver/wpad.dat

 

I can get to the file just fine

 

 

So why would it not work, is the script wrong in the wpad file?

 

 

Many thanks

[Stefletch]

Have you ticked the "Automatically Detect Settings" checkbox within the Internet Explorer LAN options?

 

Stephen

[tom_newton]

If you manually stick that wpad file into a browser's config (its functionally equivalent to proxy.pac, put it there), does that work?

[Zenden]

sorry if i am way off here but shouldnt you point the dns to wpad.theockendonacademy.com/wpad.dat rather than www? then if you check "automatically detect settings" in the browser it should work!

[pritchardavid]

Yep we have got the box ticked for "Automatically Detect Settings"

 

Seems after more test 2/4 computers as worked in our office

 

 

We didnt test it for long through, forgot to check if our internal sites worked, ie mail, eportal

Edited May 19, 2011 by pritchardavid

[pritchardavid]

sorry if i am way off here but shouldnt you point the dns to wpad.theockendonacademy.com/wpad.dat rather than www? then if you check "automatically detect settings" in the browser it should work!

 

Hi there mat

 

Your not the first person thats said that (look on the forum and the internet)

 

But im not sure how to do that

 

we have our internet site domain www.theockendonacademy.com

we also have our internal domain ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk

 

Where to you put the alias (is that the correct record?)

 

In the internal domain dns zone, or the external dns zone?

 

 

 

Never been brillant at DNS..... Would like our moodle site www.theockendonacademy.com/moodle as a subdomain if I knew how to set it up (vle.theockendonacademy.com)

[AngryTechnician]

Normally your WPAD would be on an internal server, not externally published. So you would create either an A or CNAME record in your internal DNS.

 

If you don't have an internal webserver already, and don't want to install IIS just for this, there's no reason you couldn't create wpad CNAME on your internal DNS to point to the external webserver, and then have the DHCP option set to http://wpad.ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk/wpad.dat

 

Worth noting that if your DNS is on Server 2008 or 2008 R2, you will need to alter the DNS blocklist or the wpad name will not resolve.

 

All that said, I don't think IE relies on the hostname being called WPAD (Firefox and some other browsers do). I suspect something else may be up here. Have you configured the webserver currently hosting the wpad.dat to return the correct MIME type for .dat files (application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig)? Also, what version of IE are you using? Older versions sometimes request the file based on the IP address, not the hostname, which can break in virtual hosting environments.

[pritchardavid]

Our webserver is internal (IIS)

 

 

Ok still not working

 

 

Our webserver is called WebServer - It as the IP address or 10.146.67.150. There of course is a A record for this in the DNS (Which I have made it a static one)

 

I have now since made a alias record called wpad. I setup this on our active directory domain (ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk) not our website domain

 

I then went into DHCP and changed the 252 record for wpad to the following string value http://wpad.ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk/wpad.dat

 

I then used this command on one of the DNS servers to unblock wpad - dnscmd /config /globalqueryblocklist

 

Now when I paste (http://wpad.ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk/wpad.dat) into the web browser I get this message

 

Unable to determine IP address from host name for wpad.ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk

 

 

But if I ping wpad.ockendon.thurrock.sch.uk it finds the right IP address for the server

 

 

Any ideas?