Web Site on LAN

Question

I need to make a web site address available on the local internat...
such that anyone in our local network can go to "www.example.com" and be redirected to the machine ip with this website...

How can this be done on windows servers?

Edit: And how to setup a local DNS Server?

Answer 1

You need some way for every client to map "www.example.com" to the relevant IP.

To my mind, you've got 2 options.

1. Add an entry in the intranet's DNS server (or setting up a DNS server if you've not got one).
2. Add an entry to the "hosts" file on every client on the network.

You don't say how many clients you've got, nor what OS they are running.

On linux machines, the host file is /etc/hosts.
On windows, the host file is C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Adding a line that says:

1.2.3.4 www.example.com

to this file should allow the client to resolve it.

However, editting and maintaining hosts files becomes a pain when you've many clients and/or many servers. Using a DNS server is probably the better option.

Answer 2

Do you mean on your own intranet (i.e. one solely under your control)?

If so then simply host your site using Windows IIS, apache or similar and create a DNS entry that points to the site and test.

Answer 3

Setting up a local DNS server can be done on a Windows 2003/2008 server, or on a Linux server if you wish to go that route. It's not a quick 2 minute thing though.

If you wish to set it up in Windows: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738619%28WS.10%29.aspx