With a SBS 2008 DNC, I've seen an intermittant web browsing issue with one of my clients, anyone know more?
This seems to occurr at random, and it's been months since the last time. I usually hear about it first when my clients are unable to browse the internet for *.co.uk domains. Very odd, and I can't find a pattern to suggest what causes it though a server reset always fixes the problem.
Does anyone have suggestions?
Good Answers (5)
I have also seen this issue on a new SBS2008 install where DNS is using root hints rather than DNS forwarders (as suggested by Chris and Eric).
You could also try changing the amount of time that DNS caches entries if you really wanted to use root hints:
Open regedit on the server
Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters
Create a DWORD (32bit) named MaxCacheTtl
Set the value to 0x2A300 (hex) - this is 2 days.
Restart the DNS service.
Clarification added 1 month ago:
You could also run the dnscmd command line. This means you won't have to restart the DNS server:
dnscmd.exe dnsserver /config /MaxCacheTtl 3600
3600 is number of seconds - so 1 hr in this case.
Chris S
Making networks really work for small business.
Best Answers in: Computer Networking (3), Computers and Software (1)
Instead of resetting the server just restart the DNS server service and see if that solves the problem. If it does check your DNS configuration. If the DNS is set up as a resolver try forwarding requests to OpenDNS or another trusted source instead. If you really want to do your resolving stick a 'nix box running Unbound to resolve and cache all off-site DNS queries and forward such queries to it.
Use of dig or nslookup can be very helpful here.
Eric T
President, SBSC, MCSE at The Automation Station, Inc.
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (1)
You don't mention how you have your DNS configured... ideally your SBS 2008 should be handling all the DNS on the local traffic and then configure DNS forwarders on your server that point to your ISP's DNS Servers. Then all the client machines should be configured to use your SBS server as the only DNS Server. On a client machine, do start | run | cmd | ipconfig... (copy | paste) and post the results here to see how the desktops are configured.
Hi!
Have your tried to flush the DNS cache on the server? "ipconfig /flushdns"
I see this issue sometimes and most of the times it is the DNS cache that has become polluted.
/Joakim
all the suggestions below are what I would try also. on a network with SBS 2008 or 2003 the SBS server really wants to do everything. be sure that DHCP is on this machine also with scope options pointing the your DNS which should also be on the SBS machine. check under DNS. SBS properties that interfaces are set to only the following IP addr are serving DNS requests and that this address is your SBS server.
