Unable to connect to website within the Domain

E

Edward

Hello,

I hope you guys can help. I got an email yesterday from one of our
offices in NJ saying that they cannot access their website which is being
hosted in our web server here in VA where I am. On testing for
connectivity, I tried connecting to the website using IE, but it didn't
work. I tried pinging the website from my computer, but again it failed.
I even did an nslookup but I get a DNS error of some sort (Apologies for
not remebering the exact wordings of the error).

Ok, here's the weird thing. If I use another computer on the same domain,
say a computer on an adjacent office, the connection works. IE is able to
connect, pinging it works, so does nslookup. It gets more bizarre, once I
go back to my own computer, everything begins to work also. It's as if a
switch is somehow activated if I access the website from a computer other
than mine. Even the people from our NJ office are able to access it
again.

Our webserver is running on Windows2000 server (SP 4) with IIS 5.0. My
machine is running on Windows2000 pro (SP 4). The other machines that I
tested to access the site are running on windows2000 pro and windows xp,
all with the latest service pack.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Feel free to ask me more information I
may have failed to mention.

Thanks,
Edward
 
D

David Tesar

Edward,

To summarize your issue - correct me if I am wrong: Clients who are at the
NJ site can not access a website which is hosted on your IIS 5 web server
out in VA. Users at the VA site are able to access this website.

From the sounds of things, it looks like you might be having DNS name
resolution problems. If you aren't able to resolve the website to its
proper IP address, then you will not be able to reach it. I'm not sure why
if you access the website, then the users at the other site can access it,
but let's verify some things first.

Some things that I would check are:

1) Does the website resolve to the proper IP address? To test this, you
can type nslookup <enter>, www.yourwebsitename.com <enter>. If the correct
IP address shows up, then DNS name resolution should be working properly.

2) Is something blocking your access to the website (i.e. firewall, etc)?
A good test for this would be to telnet to port 80 of the website's IP
address. So, you would go to the command prompt, type "telnet
IPaddress_of_the_website 80" without the quotes. If a blank window with a
blinking cursor comes up, then you know that the website is listening on
the

3) What is the "unfriendly" error message that you get when the users try
to access the site? To get the "unfriendly" error message in Internet
Explorer, go to Tools - Internet options - Advanced Tab - Under the browser
section, uncheck "show friendly HTTP error messages".

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