Server 2003 DNS issue when browsing websites

Question

Server 2003 with 10 Windows7 client PCs. Server was rebuilt a month ago.

Experiencing a dns issue where the clients cant resolve webpages or they are increibly slow to load. Nothing wrong with the broadband, when I point a single PC at the router's dns it resolves webpages fine but back to server ip and it behaves the same way. If I restart the dns service on the server, the problem seems to go away for a bit. Can anyone advise ?

The DNS address on the servers lan card is: 127.0.0.1

I also have looked at other customer servers and they dont have reverse lookup zones, but this server has 4 entries so prehaps over configured?

Answer 1

WHere are the Forwarders pointing to? Are they ISP or 3rd Party? If using the ISP's DNS in forwading zones add in 8.8.8.8 (for google public DNS) and see if this helps. It may be an ISP DNS issue. If not then you will need to post some more details on config etc.

Answer 2

First, check all log files on the server. Event viewer is your friend.

Second, perform a traffic capture of DNS segments on the server. Analyze the conversations and see where the problem lies.

It's likely a forwarder issue, however I've seen similar problems caused by cheap-o routers (*cough*LinkSys*cough*). Even though there shouldn't be any interference with DNS traffic, sometimes a poorly designed router / modem will interfere with DNS. Certainly the restarting of the DNS service on the server seems to indicate a server issue, however... stranger things have happened.