Windows hostfile

Hi

I have a problem. A server on the internal network is looking up in an external register for finding the correct endpoint. Sometimes the endpoint is at the same network as the sending server - but it is not able to get in contact with it because it is trying to connect with the public IP it gets from the external register.

Is it possible in the host file to tell a server that when it tries to connect to IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx it should use the internal IP yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

If you modify the HOSTS file, the computer will always use the information in the HOSTS file prior to contacting a DNS server. If you only need to do this for one computer, that should be OK. However, if you have many systems on your internal network, then it would be easier to manage this if you created a zone in your internal DNS server(s), assuming that you have your internal clients pointing to an internal DNS infrastructure for name resolution.

And it would not be a problem using IP addresses instead of one IP address and one host name?

Example

186.xx.xx.xx 10.xx.xx.xx

instead of

10.xx.xx.xx myhostname

You cannot map one IP address to another using the hosts file. The host file is a part of the DNS lookup procedure; that procedure doesn't happen at all if your computer already has the IP address of the remote host.

Thanks for the answer :-)