DNS Question - Important

You want your workstations to point to your internal DNS server and have your DNS sevrver forward reqests to external DNS servers (like your ISP's). The reason this is way is the best is because your DNS server will cache the resolutions that it gets from the forwarders so that the next time that someone in yout org makes a reqest the responce is better. But acctually thats not the best resaon the true best reason is that your local workstaions will be ablwe to resovle each others addresses faster now that they will be using DNS and aslo if you set up DHCP and active directory integrated zones you can have the DHCP server update DNS automaticly leaving the only manual updating to whatever static addresses you leave like serves....

Hope this helps!

After you install the DNS service configure it to use your ISP's DNS server as a forward lookup zone.

One other question for you QB then I will give you the points. From what I am reading, you have to delete the Root DNS zone in order to setup forwarders. As of right now, I am only upgrading one of my DC's to 2K. The other ones are not going to be for a little while. What potential roadblocks is this going to create for me. I have no other DNS servers that are internal to me. If I delete the Root DNS zone, than none of my Internal DNS requests are going to resolve or am I wrong. Any more insight you have would be a great help. I will even up the points if you give me enough help with this. I am new to DNS and this is something that is past deadline already. Thanks again for the help with this.

you should setup the DNS server address for your clients to point to your new win2000 server(not the ISP DNS server),this will allow resolution of internal requests,for resolving DNS server requests for non authorative zones (internet names for example)you should set your win2000 server to use a forwarder (the forwarders IP address here can be the ip address of the DNS server in your ISP)

Deleting the root zone does not mean you will not be able to lookup internal dns, it means the dns server does not see itself as the root server, but will lookup the dns address by addressing the real root servers (if you do not use forwarders)
This is my preffered type of installation.
You have to take care of the internal dns name you choose, if it is the same as your external dns name, you have to manually add all other dns adresses existing on the internet (like www.yourdomain.com with ip212.50.50.50 (thought this one up while typing, no use trying it))
Another way is to sub-dns your internal server (make your internal dns internal.yourdomain.com) This is the path you should follow if internal resources should be available from theinternet, and you want to have something to say about their ip adresses, all the isp has to do is tp delegate de internal subdomain to your dns server (watch the security issues here, make sure that the internet cannot find out about dns addresses which look "interesting"

Back to your main question, when you delete the root zone, you will see that your dns server properties shows the root hints.
Thes are some of the root servers on the internet which your dns server will use automaticly, sothere is no need for forwarders, other than security related issues (you can block all dns trafic on a firewall other than the traffic running to your server from the isp dns server ip address, and vice versa)

I hope to have cleared some thingsout, otherwise you cann always mail, we'll try to sort things out for you.

Good luck.

Ron

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