windows server 2003 subdomain routing to lan

Question

I have Windows Server 2003 with two network cards. 1 network card is connected to the router and router is connected to internet. 2nd cards is connected to switch and there are another 5 PC’s connected to that switch. Windows server routs all internet traffic for those PCs

I have a static IP and set up a domain name on that IP. Now what I wish to do is to add a subdomain (like computer1.domain.com I have DNS installed and know how to add subdomains) and route all that subdomain traffic to one PC inside LAN. So for example if I try to connect from the internet to domain.com I would connect to my windows server, but if I try to connect to computer1.domain.com I would connect to a PC inside my LAN.

Is this at all possible, and if so could someone at least point me to the right direction as I am struggling to see where should I start.

Thanks!

Answer 1

No. This is generally not possible if you only have one public IP address.

The main function of DNS is to resolve a name (eg. host.domain.com) into an IP address. It doesn't matter how many different subdomains or host records you create, because they will all resolve to the same IP address.

Because packets sent over the internet are addressed using only the IP address, there is generally no way for the recipient to distinguish between requests for host1.domain.com and host2.domain.com. In order to route traffic to different hosts, you will need more than one public IP address.

One common exception to this rule is HTTP. When a web browser sends an HTTP request, it also embeds information about the domain that you're trying to contact. Smart devices can use this information to route HTTP requests to different servers, even when they are behind the same IP address.