RRAS clients and DNS registration

[Gordon Fecyk]

I'm having trouble with connectivity to a Win2K DC running RRAS and DNS on
the same machine. That problem seemed to be resolved by me doing these
things:

Putting my RRAS server's private side IP in my client's Hosts file,
Assigning the dial-in user a static IP address, and
Creating a A RR record for the above static IP.

Specifically, I couldn't use Outlook 2000 to talk to an Exchange 2000 server
unless I did the above things. Both the Ex2K and Win2K server are running
in Native mode, and the dial-in clients are also Win2K, so name resolution
should be working through DNS. Once I did all this static IP and static
hosts garbage, everything worked properly.

I would have figured the Win2K client would have registered the machine's
host name with DNS as soon as it connected. The option to register the name
in DNS is turned on, and at one point I hardwired the DNS server address in
the dial-up connection's properties, to no avail.

While I'm OK assigning a static IP to this machine and user, I'd rather use
what's supposed to be dynamic DNS. How can I get RRAS clients to register
themselves with the DNS server? I have "Allow secure updates" turned on at
the DNS server already. I'd like to avoid using WINS.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

I'm having trouble with connectivity to a Win2K DC running RRAS and
DNS on the same machine. That problem seemed to be resolved by me
doing these things:

Putting my RRAS server's private side IP in my client's Hosts file,
Assigning the dial-in user a static IP address, and
Creating a A RR record for the above static IP.

Specifically, I couldn't use Outlook 2000 to talk to an Exchange 2000
server unless I did the above things. Both the Ex2K and Win2K server
are running in Native mode, and the dial-in clients are also Win2K,
so name resolution should be working through DNS. Once I did all
this static IP and static hosts garbage, everything worked properly.

I would have figured the Win2K client would have registered the
machine's host name with DNS as soon as it connected. The option to
register the name in DNS is turned on, and at one point I hardwired
the DNS server address in the dial-up connection's properties, to no
avail.

While I'm OK assigning a static IP to this machine and user, I'd
rather use what's supposed to be dynamic DNS. How can I get RRAS
clients to register themselves with the DNS server? I have "Allow
secure updates" turned on at the DNS server already. I'd like to
avoid using WINS.

289735 - Routing and Remote Access IP Addresses Register in DNS [and
dealinig with those VPN registrations]:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=289735

292822 - Name Resolution and Connectivity Issues on Windows 2000 Domain
Controller with Routing and Remote Access and DNS Insta:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=292822


--
Regards,
Ace

Please direct all replies to the newsgroup so all can benefit.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2000, MCSE+I, MCSA, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Active Directory

 

[Gordon Fecyk]

I'm having trouble with connectivity to a Win2K DC running RRAS and
Here's an update to that. This problem could be resolved by installing WINS
of course, but it turns out I only had to add one entry to my Hosts file to
make everything work: that of the IP address for the server running
Exchange, but just the host name, not the fully qualified domain name. IEe:
I only needed this in my hosts file:

192.168.64.65 srv1

I'm still at a loss why a Win2K Pro client couldn't resolve a single host
name through the server's DNS. But the static IP and the static A RR record
on the DNS server proved unnecessary.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

Here's an update to that. This problem could be resolved by
installing WINS of course, but it turns out I only had to add one
entry to my Hosts file to make everything work: that of the IP
address for the server running Exchange, but just the host name, not
the fully qualified domain name. IEe: I only needed this in my hosts
file:

192.168.64.65 srv1

Ok, hope it helps.

I'm still at a loss why a Win2K Pro client couldn't resolve a single
host name through the server's DNS. But the static IP and the static
A RR record on the DNS server proved unnecessary.

Depends on the client's search suffix. Do an ipconfig /all and it will show
that to you. When you ping or try to resolve a single name with W2k or XP,
it uses DNS first, so therefore it will suffix the single name with your
search suffix.

--
Regards,
Ace

Please direct all replies to the newsgroup so all can benefit.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2000, MCSE+I, MCSA, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Active Directory