Making my DNS public? help please.

Hi.

I am trying to set up a public DNS so i can host my own web/email server.

I have been trying everyday for about a week now, and cant get it going..

Im running 2003 server
I have a static IP (dsl)
From dsl i have my modem/router/switch (NAT,DHCP-disabled)
I have registered a domain name

I have set up the DNS at home, it works fine on the LAN - seems 100%. i can nslookup the DNS and my 2 name servers.

Here is my problem... I cant make it public, i try nslookup from a friends computer and i get my dsl companies DNS.

I have forwarded port 53 to the server.
NAT is running dynamically.

Do i need to speak to the DSL company?
I have just changed my DNS to my own for the net.. instead of the dsl companies.. and it works fine...
A friend tried my IP as their dns and it works fine. Captured the data to make sure it id my dns and not the isp's

my registrar wont accept my name servers and i dont think its my ISP blocking any ports..

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You posted this thread in two different forums. Please don't cross post.

what's the domain

Sorry, i only realised there was a DNS forum after i had posted. It wouldnt let me delete the other.

cottee.net

are these the correct dns servers hosting your domain?

ns1.zonedev.com (129.118.17.78)
ns2.zonedev.com (216.167.187.2)

at the moment, yes. They would direct it to my IP - so i could host it from home.

Well, there's a problem with them. I'm trying to resolve www.cottee.net:

dig @ns1.zonedev.com www.cottee.net
dig @ns2.zonedev.com www.cottee.net

The first server says "I have no IP address associated with that domain", the second server doesn't say anything. Requests time out which suggest a firewall or port forwarding issue.

i had to remove my IP from them so i could enter 1 of my name servers to see if it was working.

but forget about zonedev.... for this sake, shall we say that i have no entries for name servers with go daddy.

ok. Well what's the IP of the dns server that I need to test to make sure your domain works on it?

218.214.45.58
An nslookup from an external line will give me my dsl company

Here's a tip, don't use nslookup. There's all kinds of things that could go wrong in nslookup that is not a problem with the dns server or the domain you're trying to query. Get familiar with my DNS Crawler instead, or, if you use a linux system or installed BIND, "dig" is also a good utility (although sometimes my DNS Crawler has better error messages than this too)

dig @218.214.45.58 cottee.net
dig @218.214.45.58 www.cottee.net

Here I tested 2 domains. The root domain resolves to an IP address but it is private, and I would never be able to connect to it. I also queried the "www" host for that domain and it doesn't resolve to anything, so you need to create it.

As a sidenote there really isn't anything wrong with nslookup if you know which errors to ignore . If you want your DNS server to respond with its own name simply create a reverse DNS zone (on your own server, doesn't need to be delegated from your ISP) and make a PTR record that correct maps to the IP. In other words, create the zone 45.214.218.in-addr.apra and make a PTR record for 218 that points to ns1.cottee.net (or whatever the correct name is).

Your setup appears to be more or less correct, you just need to change the IP address of cottee.net to an external address, eg 218.214.45.58, not 192.168.1.2.

Cheers!
AlanGrah

_________
DNS Services: www.nettica.com

k, thanks so much for the help guys, i really appreciate it, im studying net engineering and not one of my teachers can tell me how to set this up.

I have set up everything and all the info seems to be there in the crawler, but godaddy still wont accept them.

I am little confused when it comes to knowing whats what... it seems there are so many places to set hosts and name servers and can get quite confusing but i refuse to quit.

Is it really this hard or am i going the wrong way about it?
Thanks for the DNS crawler stuff too, very useful.

If you know of a diagram that shows how they relate to eachother, i think that would really help me.

thanks again.

Ok, notice that the www host DNS Crawler link returns 2 records: A CNAME and an 'A' record. Returning these 2 records like that could crap out older resolver servers. Please remove the CNAME record and assign the IP to the domain directly.

In terms of your godaddy account this is what you need to do. For people to find your server you need to assign your server's IP address to your server's domain(s) in the registry. Godaddy calls this creating "hosts". This involves you typing in "ns1" or "ns2" into a text box then your IP address in another textbox and boom, your name servers get registered. You'll probably have to assign the same IP to both ns1 and ns2. Then you need to set your name servers to your server. This involves typing "ns1.cottee.net" and "ns2.cottee.net" into the textboxes for your primary and secondary name servers. Then you click "Save Changes" and wait for it to take effect. See the below link (another great tool of mine):

whois cottee.net

When the Name Server fields are updated, then you should be good to go. You can always verify it's taken effect in the DNS here:

dig @a.gtld-servers.net cottee.net

You guys are legends. I could never find the option to enter an IP with godaddy. It's all making sense now

When i get this going I should be getting some decent traffic and be hosting a few sites and id be more than happy to advertise for u.

Godaddy, has accepted my name servers, so ill wait till they prop. and get back to you guys.