Internal vs. External Domain Name

[XXXXXXXXXXX]

Hi Everyone:

I am planning an Windows 2003 Active Directory domain for a client company.
The external domain name, for example, MYDOMAIN.com is registered and has an
active website on the Internet. The internal domain name under AD is
inside.MYDOMAIN.com.

Also, Exchange 2000 server is on the internal network to process mail on
user accounts such as (e-mail address removed) and (e-mail address removed) who is
the same end user.

1) Is this separations sufficient to maintain security between the
external vs. internal domains? (Assume hardware firewalls are in place
etc.)

2) Would AD see inside.MYDOMAIN.com as the root domain or would it
be seen as some kind of child domain?

3) What other domain issues should I be concerned about?

4) What other Exchange issues should I be concerned about?

Thanks for any input and help.

Oren

 

[Marina Roos [SBS-MVP]]

Name your AD domain something like company.local and not company.com. This
will give problems if you want to reach the company's website and email. So
it is about what is behind the company. and not what is set before that is
important.

 

[XXXXXXXXXXX]

Marina,

Thanks for the information. Could you elaborate on what are the problems on
reaching the company's website and email, the reasons for this strategy or,
could you direct me to MS Knowledgebase resources or other?

Thanks,

Oren

 

[Marina Roos [SBS-MVP]]

The AD domainname is just for your internal network. Because W2K and W2K3
server are also handling the DNS-server, you should make sure that the ad
domainname is not the same as the registered domainname. If it would, than
DNS-server will never find that external website, because it thinks it is
internal. So always name your internal domain something like company.local
but if you ever expect to have Macs in your network, make it company.lan or
company.office or whatever. The characters behind the "." should not be com,
org, net etcetera.
In DNS-server you will put the ISP-DNS-numbers in the tab Forwarders, so
that the internal network 'knows' where to search when surfing the net.
Also very important: DNS on your servernic(s) should ONLY point to your
server-IP (as your server is the DNS-server).