This is less a call for a troubleshooting, but rather a question of understanding the problem.
Take the following config:
DC1: Domain controller of contoso.com 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0 NO GATEWAY has DNS installed DNS config: localhost, DNS1 (in this order)
DNS1: Member of the domain 192.168.0.2 NO GATEWAY has DNS installed. DNS config localhost, DC1 (in this order)
DC1 hosts the domain contoso.com, DNS2 hosts the domain disneyland.com with one A-record www.disneyland.com pointing to 10.10.10.1
Client1 has 192.168.0.3 and uses 192.168.0.1 as resolver.
Ping from Client to www.disneyland.com tells me, that the host could not be found. Obvious, because no zone on DC1.
Configured a forwarder to 192.168.0.2 from DC1.
Ping from Client to www.disneyland.com tells me, that the host could not be found. Not so obvious....cause of the forwarder. But to be clear, what came back, was NOT a timeout but the clear statement that the host could not be found.
nslookup www.disneyland.com gave me back the correct ip of 10.10.10.1
Switched to DNS1 and tried a ping to www.disneyland.com. NO LUCK! Even though i tried the ping on the server hosting the zone.
Frustration....went to the Gym.
Back at my desk. Got the stupid idea, to enter a gateway (a virtual non existing gateway) in the config of DNS1. BAAAAAM...Tried out the ping and the FQDN was perfectly translated to the ip adress. (no echo reply, but that is fine since www.disneyland.com
is an imaginary host).
Same thing from the client. Forwarder works perfectly. Name resolution works fine.
Now my question: Why does a client get no response from a DNS server (so, he doesn´t even try to resolve the name) if there is no gateway configured in the DNS. And more important, why does nslookup work, while ping gives the host-not-found-error? Is it
maybe, because nslookup sockets directly to the dns?
The funny thing is, another A-record, pointing to an adress which resides in 192.168.0.0/24 works fine, even though no gateway is configured.
Thanks in Advance,
Patrick