I have a customer w/a multi-homed server. 1 NIC is used for their network and the other NIC is on /29 network that attaches to our network over a wan.
each nic has its own set of dns servers configured. he can't resolve anything on our network but i know this used to work.
there aren't any entries in his hosts or lmhosts files that would jack this up. right now he's using a hard coded ip address in his application to direct his traffic back to us. he has the correct dns servers configured on the nic that attaches to our wan.
with 2 nics and multiple name servers how does windows handle name resolution? does it try the servers on both nics?
our name servers are first on the list so windows should query them first right?

 

Have you been able to browse to something on the network via the IP? I know what you are saying here as far as DNS but does going to the IP actually work and the name not?

 

I don't really have any specific advice, but what's the server OS? I'm asking because I seem to recall that the way in which you can control name resolution (and the degree of control you have over it) changed notably from Server 2003 to Server 2008. Again though, that's just a faint recollection I have.

 

Windows will query the first available name server it finds. If that server doesn't know the answer Windows will not ask the next one.

It sounds like this setup is a bit odd but what he should be doing is having his server point to his DNS servers. His DNS servers should then have conditional forwarders setup for your domain. This means that his DNS servers will need to be able to talk to yours.

 

rza, the server is working fine except for this issue.
billiam, i'll find out
doop, i'll check into that.

i did have the user issue an nslookup command and it returned his server every time. i had him set the server to my server and it resolved the name correctly. doop is probably right and at one time their servers were rx'ing zone transfers from our servers.

 

doop, when you say, "Windows will query the first available name server it finds." where does windows look first? does it look at the nics or ?

<-not a windows head

 

Each nic can have DNS servers configured. I have no idea how it decides what server to choose if multiple nics have entries.

If it was just a single nic it always tries in the listed order of servers.

"ipconfig /all" will show you all of them.

 

thanks. i have the output from /all. no one seems to know how windows polls dns if the server has multiple nics.

 

Actually I may have a good guess on this. If you go into network connections then at the top click the advanced heading, then advanced settings, there should be a list there of all the network communication devices and has a priority list. My guess is the first one in the list(if its connected) would be the one it uses to grab DNS info.

 

BTW - Are there WINS servers listed for either of the interfaces?