Need some help with DNS guys... actually I'm not 100% sure its DNS that's giving me the problems. I'm configuring this network for a school (40 clients) and AD is all set up and all, but I can't seem to get the server and the clients to connect to the Internet. Basically the server has two NICs, one to the switch with all the clients and the other to the ADSL modem. I've also set up RRAS and DHCP, and as far as I can tell I've done them right - there wasn't much to both of them anyway, so I'm narrowing the problem down to DNS. When I open a web browser instead of searching for a the url it actually searches for the IP address, and then well it says page not found. Yes the connection and the modem works (tested it with workgroup setup). I've typed in NSlookup and its returning the server name and adress and all... I can ping the server from anywhere, and as I said all the clients can connect to the server just fine. what else could I have possibly done wrong? help!

oh something else i forgot to mention... i looked up the ISP DNS settings and put that in into the DNS forwarders list... well there was like four of em, so I chucked all four in... and no it still didn't work.. the Network NIC has a statically assigned IP address while the internet NIC is dynamically assigned (could this be the problem? the account doesn't have an static ip address...) help!!

If nslookup say's your DNS is ok I would check your settings in RRAS. Do you have NAT enabled? If not, you need it to have the clients access the internet. RRAS also has some limited DHCP capability to provide addressing to remote clients connecting and I've found in 2000 anyway that you don't want it running at the same time as your DHCP service. It seems to cross things up and reduce the ability of clients to access the internet.

Yeah I've got NAT enabled... the RRAS settings was pretty straightforward? i pretty much just assigned which NIC was connected to the net and which was connected to the network... the thing is i can't even access the net from the server, so i'm guessing its something wrong there? I've heard about the issue with DHCP and RRAS (not too familiar with it tho...), but shouldn't I be able to access the net from the server if i've configured things right?

Check your IP settings on the server (which should have them statically assigned) and ensure your DNS settings point at your server. Forward your server's DNS to your ISP's DNS server(s). Make sure the clients are getting your DNS server's address for their DNS settings from DHCP.

What is the IP address of the default gateway you’re clients are using? (Internal IP address NAT router??)

thanks for all your help so far guys.... to answer some of the question - Yup the DNS settings point to the static IP address of the server and I'm pretty sure I've forwarded my server's DNS to the ISP's DNS... unless I'm doing it wrong? Basically I got the ISP's DNS and put them in the forwarders of the DNS? sorry if that's like totally wrong but as far as I know that's how its supposed to be done. Ok my settings are for the network NIC have a static IP address of 192.168.1.1, which is also what I've put as the default gateway and DNS server. The internet NIC is dynamically assigned for IP, default gateway and DNS. IP is 10.0.0.11, default gateway is 10.0.0.138 (which happens to be the IP for the adsl modem) In DNS i've put the forwarders of the ISP as per the website - i'm in Australia btw and herea re some link of the DNS info. http://bigpond.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bigpond.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?display=content&p_faqid=5586&display=content I’m not too sure about adding the DNS suffix tho… do I need to do that? My problem now is that the server can't even connect to the Internet, so I need to get that fixed up first before I worry about the clients... once I can connect the server to the net, that should be a step in the right direction right? Sorry if my questions sound totally newbish… well mainly coz I am newbish. Heh.