Another DNS and AD question

[msegal]

Hi,

I have a Wingate server running on XP. It is a member of a Win2K domain that has two DNS servers. One of the servers has its own internet connection on one NIC for its own use (it is also a terminal server). It has another NIC that points to the LAN. This external NIC points to itself for DNS. The internal NIC points to itself and the other DNS server. The other server has only one NIC and points to itself and the other server for DNS but points to the Wingate machine as the gateway. The first DNS server is using the ISP as its DNS forwarder the second DNS server uses the first machine as its forwarder. Both machines have root hints populated. The Wingate machine has one NIC pointing to the internet and uses the ISP for DNS. It has a second NIC that points to the LAN and is not configured to use a gateway or DNS. Everything works exceptionally well.... except..... every few days the local Wingate machine hammers itself with DNS request that are passed on the the ISP. I am at a loss as to why this is happening and needless to say my ISP is a little concerned. I am anal about keeping the systems fully patched, firewalled, etc. The history log shows thousands DNS requests from the Wingate machine to itself for external addresses. Neither NIC points to the Wingate for DNS. As it does not happen all of the time, there must be a certain circumstance that causes this. I am now using version 6.1.1 that I installed a couple of days ago but after checking the logs I can see that the problem goes back farther than that. I upgraded from 6.0.4. Any ideas?

[MattP]

Hi,

Can you please add the two DNS servers to the WinGate Advanced Options applet (Start-->Programs-->WinGate-->Advanced Options-->DNS servers) and see if that helps?

I do have a couple of questions regarding your setup.

1. If you don't have the WinGate server's internal NIC pointing at the AD DNS server then is the WinGate server not a member of the AD Domain?

2. If the WinGate server is the gateway for the LAN can you set the AD DNS servers to point at the internal (LAN) adapter of the WinGate server, WinGate can then forward the requests to the ISP's DNS server.

3. Have you configured anything in the WinGate DNS/WINS resolver?

[msegal]

Hi,

I had forgotten to mention that I had already entered the two DNS servers in the Advanced options as recomended.

As to your questions:

1. The original setup instructions suggest that the internal NIC should leave DNS servers and Gateway blank and I have never changed this nor does it seem to make a difference. Unless of course that is part of the problem. But yes it is part of the AD Domain.

2. As one of the servers has its own direct connection and does not use Wingate for internet connectivity I felt this was the better choice for the two servers to use for external DNS as the machine that has its own internet connection really has no need to talk to the Wingate machine. But, if you think switching this to point to the Wingate machine will make a difference, I can certainly try it but I will wait for your response. And also, wouldn't the server that has Wingate as its gateway get DNS from the Wingate machine by default?

3. No, I have not configured the Wingate DNS/WINS resolver. Do I need to?

Thanks

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