Greetings all,
Here is an intriguing topic – We have a client whose network was set up, it seems, by a bit of a cowboy. There are numerous flaws in the configuration of different aspects of their IT infrastructure.
The one I would like to discuss is the DNS name chosen for their Windows Server 2003 domain. The name in use is companyname.local.com ..!
The person who entered this into the wizard must have been having one of those uncertainty moments. Unsure as to whether to use .com or .local , he chose a happy medium and used both. At this point it’s useful to point out that the company in question does not own the domains companyname.com or local.com or have any affiliation with them. I think this is quite possibly one of the silliest single misconfigurations I have ever seen.
It is only a simple branch office network with about 10 local users. The name does not seem to affect their ability to conduct internal communications, nor to access external web sites. No internal resources are directly accessible from the public Internet, and the domain is not part of a larger hierarchy. However, I have already thought of a couple of reasons as to why this is an extremely bad idea. It is obviously not at all a best practice.
Interestingly enough, it appears the owners of local.com have configured their DNS so that anythingyoulike.local.com resolves to one of their servers.
So I would like any input on what consequences could arise for the business due to using such a name for their Windows domain. There is a large IT strategy report being produced, covering their entire operation. This will be a small part of that report, but I wanted to see what other ideas people could come up with and if there’s any areas I hadn’t thought of. I would be interested to discuss any constructive points.