mwshuffy

I follow all the server configs. And can ping domain.shuffsnet on the server, but cannot ping it from any of my other computers to join them up.

Guess theres a problem with the DNS server, I'm using a Netgear router WGR614.

All ips are like so:
192.168.1.2 MATTHEWLAPTOP
192.168.1.3 MATTHEW
192.168.1.4 MATTHEWSERVER


This is my first occurence with Windows Server so, all suggestions needed!

yawnbox

your netgear router is your DNS server? or is Windows Server running DNS? either way, DHCP is responsible for assigning IPs. you should only have one DNS server and one DHCP server running at one time in a simple network like that. DNS resolves IPs to host names, or host names to IPs, and a lot of other stuff. how is the physical topology set up?

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DigitalPhreak

First of all, you dont really supply adequate information about your server/network configuration.

This is what I recommend for an in-home domain setup. Have teh server perfrom both DHCP and DNS. Create your DHCP scopes and make them relative to your network size. In other words, there is no need for a Class B network with 2165432156436165461564 IPs available for auto configuration. A class C would do fine. Hell even a partial Class C subnet would be fine. Im thinking like 255.255.255.128 submask or something. Make sure you configure your DHCP server to have the "DNS" and "router"(default gateway) set appropriately. Router should be the router IP and DNS should be your server's IP respectively.

Next, configure your DNS server with the appropriate forward and reverse lookups to your domain. This should happen automatically when DNS is installed except for reverse lookups as this has to be done manually. No big deal, its mostly an automatic process. Once your lookups are correct and working go to your forward lookup properties and make sure you assign appropriate forwarders. Naturally, your server sitting on the inside of your network has no way of being able to "find" computers around teh world and appropriately so since you dont want to put ur personal dns out there on the internet. Your forwarders should be your ISPs DNS servers which can be retrieved from your ISP or you can just grab them off of your router and they never change. Of course an easier option would be to just use a public DNS for forwarding (i.e verizons line 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.1).

As long as you have those things done and the IP configuration is correct on the server and the computers then it should work fine.

Also, your servers IP configuration should have the DNS set with its own IP as the server wants to look to itself for dns and not anywhere else. Thats what forwarders are for (to find stuff that your own dns knows nothing about).

All computers on the inside of the network should look to the server for DNS for that matter which would be done automatically if you set up DHCP correctly.

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