Good Evening all. I have a dell 2003 server with a domain abc.local. About 4 months ago I decided to my dismay that I would turn the DNS off of the server and let the Netopia router take care of the service. Well long story short I decided to turn it back on. problem is that the computers or the server cant seem to see the DNS. If I run nslookup I get an error. I apologize I cant remember the error. But it just doesn’t see it. The server is set to 192.168.1.99 the DNS is se=t to itself. The forwarders were pre me so I don’t know if they are correct. And dummy me decided that the reverse lookup wasn’t needed so I deleted it and don’t remember the settings. I really don’t know what I was thinking considering I don’t know what it is. This is a basic DSL to Netopia (DNS and DHCP on Netopia) to server. 1. what would a setup to forward the DNS from workstations to server then server to router look like? 2. What is the idea behind a reverse lookup? Is it needed? I appreciate the help The workstations are working and everyone is on the network. When I turned the service back on I set the DNS on the workstations to the server (192.168.1.99) They log much faster they just get an error in the application event log stating that the DNS server cant be found. But they can still log on. haha Any book suggestions? I am fairly new to domain controllers and DNS in general. I am having a blast messing with it though. Michael

go to a cmd prompt and type nslookup this should tell you which DNS server you are using. Then try to resolve microsoft.com or an IP address on lan, if it returns an IP or computer name then you should be able to resolve. If it doesn't then type server=192.168.1.99 where the ip address is the DNS server you really want to use and try the same steps. also you might need to set a forwarder in your windows 2003 DNS to point where it will resolve external IP addresses.

Clients should point to the WIndows server for DNS. That server should be pointed to itself for DNS, with a forwarder to ISP DNS server. "Milk was a bad choice!"

A reverse lookup is the reverse of a typical DNS lookup. Instead of a name being sent to the DNS server and an IP address being returned, an IP address is sent and a name is returned. In most networking situations this is not needed. Since computers locate other computers running TCP/IP with IP addresses, once they have the IP address, that's all they need. But some services DO need reverse IP. For example mail servers often check the IP address of an incoming client's request with reverse DNS lookup, and then can find if the domain name matches the sender's details. e.g. "HELO greatguy.acme.com (123.10.10.10)" reverse IP reveals spamdude.apex.com = REJECTED. However, services internal to a Windows network use reverse IP, so when i screwed up the reverse IP, things no longer worked! So, yes, it is needed. "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." - BILL CLINTON

Thank you all for the wonderful replies. When I type nslookup it say's it cant find the server on 192.168.1.199. I Ran netdiag and dcdiag, dcdiag seemed to fix something because the errors on netdiag went away. lol still have no clue what that all means. This is more complicated than I originally thought. What do yall think about "Mastering Windows 2003 server" the book. I need to start some were. I don’t really want to get MCSE certified, but I will if that's the best way to learn this stuff. haha thanks all.