Accessing external Web site from an internal client -- both share same domain name
I've configured a Win2000 SBS server with the same domain name as the company's external Web site. Primary Active Directory/DNS domain name: company.com. The external hosted Web site is www.company.com. When first installed, I was able to reach the site from an internal client, but now it is not resolving. What is the best workaround to not following the recommended practice of having the same domain name internally and externally? The company wishes to ultimately host the Web site internally and wanted to avoid name changes in the future.
I'm not sure what the "best" workaround is, but I do have a couple of ideas. If you only need to access the external site from a couple of client computers, you could edit the hosts file (located in
system32driversetc. and manually associate the external IP address with the www.company.com domain name. The hosts file always overrides DNS servers.
Another workaround is to setup a additional name for the external site --perhaps external.company.com. Then, install IIS on the system current resolving as www.company.com. Set IIS up to always redirect (what's called an "HTTP 302 redirect") requests to the external Web site under the alternate name.
This was first published in August 2002
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