Site not viewable internally

Chris,

It sounds like your firewall is "getting in the way". Most firewalls don't allow you to "connect" to the external IP address(es) of your firewall from an "internal" address. The external DNS, however, resolves to the "public" external address.

To work around the problem, set up a DNS server inside your firewall to resolve your websites to their internal IPs. Make it the first DNS source. Everything else would resolve externally.

Hope this helps.

I like answer #2 but whether it will work depends on how your Linux router is set up. If it is set up for three ports (external, internal and DMZ where your servers live), you'll have to not only implement DNS (or HOSTS files) but will also have toconfigure a route from the internal network to the DMZ.

For a simple internal/external network, you can quickly figure out whether DNS/HOSTS is going to work. If you can reach the sites by their internal IP address, you're home free with the DNS/HOSTS solution. If not, then you also have a routing issue.

By the way, before you get too handy with creating routes to your DMZ, give some thought to security concerns. The whole point of a DMZ is to isolate your public servers from your internal network - creating those routes might breach the protection you've built.

paul

i think a simple hosts file on each internal computer should do the trick, and without any security concerns.

JF