Domain!

[Arpan]

Microsoft defines the word 'DOMAIN' as a group of computers that are
part of a network. Now I access the Net using cable connection which
means that my personal computer is a part of a network. Is my PC a
domain or is the entire network of which I am a part a domain? What
exactly is a domain?

I navigated to Control Panel--->Administrative Tools & opened Internet
Services Manager. I right-clicked 'Default SMTP Virtual Server' &
clicked 'Properties'. Under the 'Delivery' tab I clicked the
'Advanced...' button & found that the 'Fully qualified domain name'
textbox is already populated. When I clicked the 'Check DNS' button, a
message saying 'The domain name is valid' popped-up. Now from where did
IIS get that domain name?

I log in to my Windows 2000 Pro system using 'Adminstrator' as the
Login ID & the domain name wasn't 'Administrator'.

Thanks,

Arpan

 

[Steve Parry [MVP]]

Arpan fumbled, fiddled and fingered:

Microsoft defines the word 'DOMAIN' as a group of computers that are
part of a network. Now I access the Net using cable connection which
means that my personal computer is a part of a network. Is my PC a
domain or is the entire network of which I am a part a domain? What
exactly is a domain?

I navigated to Control Panel--->Administrative Tools & opened Internet
Services Manager. I right-clicked 'Default SMTP Virtual Server' &
clicked 'Properties'. Under the 'Delivery' tab I clicked the
'Advanced...' button & found that the 'Fully qualified domain name'
textbox is already populated. When I clicked the 'Check DNS' button, a
message saying 'The domain name is valid' popped-up. Now from where
did IIS get that domain name?

I log in to my Windows 2000 Pro system using 'Adminstrator' as the
Login ID & the domain name wasn't 'Administrator'.

Thanks,

Arpan

From the Windows 2000 help file:

"In Windows 2000 and Active Directory, a collection of computers defined
by the administrator of a Windows 2000 Server network that share a
common directory database.
A domain has a unique name and provides access to the centralized user
accounts and group accounts maintained by the domain administrator. Each
domain has its own security policies and security relationships with
other domains and represents a single security boundary of a Windows
2000 computer network. Active Directory is made up of one or more
domains, each of which can span more than one physical location.

For DNS, a domain is any tree or subtree within the DNS namespace.
Although the names for DNS domains often correspond to Active Directory
domains, DNS domains should not be confused with Windows 2000 and Active
Directory networking domains.
See also directory partition."

Basically a "Microsoft Domain" is a group of PC's and users whose
security and access are controled by a Windows NT,2000 or 2003 server.

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

Without getting too technical, "Domain" is used in two related senses:

DNS domains are the one most people are familiar with from daily use of the Internet. microsoft.com, google.com, iana.org and so
forth. On a cable connection, your ISP will usually assign (through DHCP) their domain name that your computer or connected router
belongs to. The 'fully qualified domain name' will be your computer's name prepended to that domain.

For the average home computer the domain won't make any difference except that if you type in, say, "xxx" to your browser, Windows
helpfully tries to connect you to http://xxx.<your domain name> and other variations on that, before giving up with the IE
cant-find-your-site screen.

Active directory (or older NT LM) 'domains' are a secured group of networked, Windows machines with one or more 'domain controller'
servers. This type of 'domain' is a completely different animal of course, and specific to Microsoft networking. And what makes it
confusing is that an Active Directory domain is associated with a DNS domain (such as mycompany.local). And when your computer has
been joined to such an AD domain, it is quite important that its associated primary DNS domain be set correctly for things to work
right. (If you open a CMD prompt you can use "ipconfig /all" to see the primary DNS suffix that your computer is using, and you can
set this in TCP/IP properties if you wish.)

Unless you override it, the FQDN on the SMTP delivery tab will be preconfigured at startup to
<yourcomputername>.<yourDNSdomainname>. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think that the DNS test there just checks that there is an
MX record for the top-level domain you've specified - it doesn't tell you much more than that. For example, if your FQDN shows there
as "arpan.mycompany.com", then the DNS test will check that it can see mail exchanger record(s) for mycompany.com.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.