Can't see companies externally hosted web site

[Michael Lawson]

I've got a curious problem that I hope has a simple solution. The computers
on my company's domain cannot get to our externally hosted web site. The
computers can see other web sites with no problem but just not our own. The
domain is setup to be mycompany.com but we can't see the www.mycompany.com
website. We have DNS setup to forward requests to external DNS servers for
names not resolved internally. I'm sure we have to add something to the DNS
records to point the www.mycompany.com name to the external ip address but
I'm not sure what to add where. Unfortunately DNS is not one of my strong
suits. Thanks for any help - I can sure use it.....

Mike Lawson
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Greg Stigers]

If you ping www.mycompany.com, to what address does it resolve? If you put
the webserver's external ip address in the URL, e.g. http://207.46.156.188,
does that work?

Do you have your Windows domain name set to mycompany.com? That could cause
some name resolution confusion, especially if there is name duplication
between WINS and external DNS.

DNS can seem like deep voodoo, and parts of it are, but there are some
really lucid explanations available, and the basics can be pretty basic,
basically easy to understand. You just have to look for some author who
starts simple, and keeps it simple. Once you have that part down, you can
wade in a little deeper, and eventually, you will no more than you ever
wanted to.