internal dns server on wk2

My situation:

We have mail.mycompany.com redirected to a page we host in our windows 2000 server. Through DHCP I define my lan clients to use the DNS of my ISP to resolve external traffic requests. When I try to reach mail.mycompany.com from the LAN it does not find the page.
I would like to know if I can solve this problem with a dns server for internal traffic telling clients that mail.mycompany.com is on e.g. 192.168.0.1.
If yes, what kind of record do I need to configure? How can I tell my lan clients to use one dns for internal and another dns for external traffic?

Thank you in advance and sorry for my bad english

You don't have to. You can set the computers on your LAN to use your internal DNS server as their resolver. Allow recursive queries in your LAN DNS server config.

An easier alternative is to simply set mail.mycompany.com to the desired IP in all LAN computer hosts files.

The second option (hosts) is not a solution for us. We have about 50 mobile users with laptops.

I don't understand the first option. Where do I have to configure my w2000 dns server to allow recursive queries?

How do I configure my dns server to translate mail.mycompany.com to 192.168.0.1 ?

I read something about forwarders. If I manage to configure my server to resolve the internal querie above, shall I configure my ISP's DNS as forwarders?

thanks.

You say you're using the w2k dns server so I will not be able to provide you with specifics on how to configure your server. But I'll help as best as I can with generics.

to modify mail.mycompany.com you may do 1 of 2 things.

1) Create a zone for mycompany.com

Then you can set whatever records you want for that domain. More specifically, you can add an 'A' record for the mail host.

2) Create a zone for mail.mycompany.com

With this minor hack, you can modify the records for that host only, and leave the www.mycompany.com etc alone. More specifically, you add an 'A' record for the origin (zone root).

I have no clue how to enable recursive queries in w2k dns server. Doing so is also kind of like setting up a caching server, as opposed to an authoritative server only.

As for forwarders, I'm not certain what you mean. If what you mean is that the server will recommend certain "forwarder" dns servers if it can't resolve the request, then you can do that too. By default a server recommends the root servers (a.root-servers.net etc). But you may also choose to recommend the ISP provided DNS servers. Another option is to specify in your DHCP the primary server to be the LAN dns server, and the secondary to be an ISP provided server.

Thank you for your fast response and your detailed answers!

I created a zone with my.company.com and a "A" record, but I had problems with URL

With your second solution, (Create a zone for mail.mycompany.com ) it works fine.

I configured my ISP's DNS as forwarders, but I will try with the root servers as you recommend.

Thank you again.

I believe SilentRage has answered this question Basically when I setup a Zone in win2k dns I create one A record and use CNAMES that use the single A record for all other hosts as if you ever have an IP change you need only update the one record, I also create my MX records etc to use the single A record. You will need to craete a record for each host E.G. www, ftp etc. I would use your internal DNS for remote and internal resolution, just make sure under DNS properties for your server you specifies that DNS listen on all IP's and that the root servers are present under root hints "I have met techs who like to remove these"

Sam Land
http://www.dyndnsservices.com