I am on a home network of 4 systems with a cable connection. I just promoted Server 2003 to a domain controller. What’s the best or easiest way to set up DNS so my other systems can join the domain I created? - Should I have a separate computer for a DNS server? - Can the domain controller itself be the DNS server? - Can I use my cable router to act as a DNS server? I tried the last two options however, my other systems were not able to find the domain I created. Suggested appreciated. Thanks, Jim

You don't require a separate server for a DNS. In fact, DNS should already be setup on the DC (DNS is required to promote a server to a DC). What you should be doing is forwarding the DNS on your DC to your ISP's DNS server(s). This way, your DC's DNS will resolve all internal queries and external queries will be forwarded to the internet (ie: via your ISP's DNS) for resolution. If you're unable to contact the DNS on your server when attempting to join a client to the domain you have serious issues that need to be dealt with. Likely you setup DNS incorrectly before promoting or, made changes to it after promotion. The best thing to do when promoting a server to a DC is to allow Windows to setup the DNS during the promotion. Then, the only changes you would need to make after the fact would be to setup forwarding and create a reverse lookup zone. If you can't figure out what's wrong your best bet may be to wipe the server and redo it from scratch and let it setup DNS automatically during the promotion to a DC.

Some routers allow to act as forwarding DNS servers. The advantage of this is if the DNS IP addresses for the ISP's DNS servers change, and your ISP uses DHCP for IP configuration, your DNS server would continue to send DNS queries to your router, which would in turn forward the queries to the correct IP address of the new DNS servers on the ISP. If your router supports this, and your ISP uses DHCP, I would recommend setting up forwarding to your router. "Republicans in Congress are moving to ratify a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, thus ending the Iraqi insurgency."