Member Avatar for Marymead-IT

Hi All,

We're having trouble accessing our own website after replacing our DNS server.

I can't check the settings of the old server because it had a pretty major hardware failure before we were finished replacing it.

- All other websites are working fine
- The domain here is "marymead.org.au"
- Our website (www.marymead.org.au) is hosted remotely by NetSpeed Internet

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Marymead-IT

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by DimaYasny

Dani AI

Generated

Good catch by — the temporary fix (using the ISP resolver as primary and your local DNS as secondary) is a useful diagnostic clue. As suggested, this usually means the local server either stopped performing recursion/forwarding properly after the replacement or it's answering as an authoritative (internal) zone that no longer matches the public records. Both will make internal clients see wrong answers while external resolvers return the correct hosted site.

Quick verification you can run now (from an internal machine):

nslookup www.example.com <your-local-dns-ip>
nslookup www.example.com <isp-dns-ip>
nslookup -type=NS yourdomain.com <isp-dns-ip>

(or use dig @<server> www.example.com +short if available). Compare results. If the local server returns NXDOMAIN or an IP that differs from the ISP/public result, the problem is local DNS configuration.

Permanent fixes and practical steps

  • If the local DNS must stay primary (AD integration), enable forwarding to the ISP or to a public recursive resolver so unanswered queries get resolved. Configure conditional forwarders for any external hosts you rely on if needed.
  • If the local server accidentally hosts an authoritative zone for your public domain and you don’t need internal overrides, remove the zone or correct the A records so they point to the remote host’s IP. For split-horizon setups, deliberately maintain matching internal records.
  • After changes, clear caches: on clients ipconfig /flushdns; on Windows DNS servers restart the DNS service or use dnscmd /clearcache; on BIND use rndc flush.

Checklist before finishing: confirm external NS/SOA for your domain, ensure DHCP hands out the local DNS only if that server can resolve external names (via forwarders), and avoid giving external resolvers as primary to AD clients (they need the local DNS for SRV records). If in doubt, capture nslookup outputs from both local and public servers and compare them; that will pinpoint whether the issue is authoritative data or recursion/forwarding.

Recommended Answers

All 10 Replies

Member Avatar for lasher511

Lol Bl

Member Avatar for Marymead-IT

Thanks for your reply lasher, you truly are an asset to the IT community and no doubt, the world. One might compare you to Gandhi...
May the seed of your loins rest fruitfully in the belly of your woman... :-|


For anyone who's not an artard, I figured out that by changing the primary DNS server on a PC to one provided by our ISP and using our local DNS server as the secondary, we now have access to everything including our website.

This had to be changed on our proxy server too to fix the issue for the majority of users who are routed through it.

Marymead-IT

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

Let me get the config right - you had a DNS of your own (what kind, btw? it might be important) and you also transferred the zone to your ISP, who actually bcasted it to the root servers (was the authoritative DNS for the zone). now you've removed your internal DNS server and reset the internal workstations to use the ISP's DNS. and it doesn't work?

Member Avatar for lasher511

Thanks for your reply lasher, you truly are an asset to the IT community and no doubt, the world. One might compare you to Gandhi...
May the seed of your loins rest fruitfully in the belly of your woman... :-|

why thank you dearest supervisor i doest my bestus

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

I wonder where the moderators are...

Member Avatar for lasher511

Lol i dunno probably in bed sleeping.

I acctually sit next to him all day and we are just playing around.

Right after he posted this he managed to solve the problem by setting the computers primary DNS server to our ISP's and left our local DNS server as the secondary one.

Member Avatar for Duki

ha, had the same problem at my work place. We just changed our domain from .com to .local

I'm sure your way was more time efficient... =\

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

ah. so you used the local dns as a forwarder, not as a zone controller.

I've had this issue with an office that has a local dns server on AD (without it the workstations can't log on to windows) and three outgoing connections with different ISPs, so I had to set up every workstation (through dhcp of course) to use 4 different DNS servers for different purposes. not to mention the huge routing table and the gateway list.

Member Avatar for lasher511

sounds like a bit of a riot there dima. Lucky we only have a reasonably small network then i suppose.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

size doesn't matter, remember? ;)

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