Accessing "domain.com" is slow inside internal network

[Seizure1990]

Hey all,

 

A while back, I made a topic regarding some major networking issues my organization was having. I DID basically solve them, and everything works smoothly for the most part. Thanks to all who helped!

 

However, there is a small issue that I thought I had fixed, which seems to have come back to some extent.

 

Basically, our network exists on domain.org. We also have a publicly accessible website which is hosted offsite, outside of the network, at the address domain.org.

 

If you access the website from anywhere BUT the office, there is no problem. Everything loads fine. However, if you try to access domain.org (or www.domain.org, or http://www.domain.org) then it seems to take a really long time to resolve. The browser just sits there churning for a bit, and then finally, the website pulls up and loads normally. It should be noted that if you access it via IP address, it loads perfectly fine, even within the network.

 

Clearly, there is some sort of DNS/resolution issue going on, bu I am stumped as to what the problem is. I already have an alias which points the parent directory (domain.org) to the proper IP address. I also have a www alias which points to the same IP address. From my understanding, that is all I should need to get things working properly,but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

I did notice there is a secondary host record for domain.org which points to our local server's internal IP address. This record seems to be dynamically and automatically added - I didn't add it myself, and it has a timestamp, rather then the "static" tag that the record I added for our website has.

 

Perhaps there is an issue where the dynamic record gets checked first, and only reverts to the manual record after some sort of time-out? I'm not entirely sure. I'm afraid that if I remove the dynamic record which points to our internal server, that will break functionality for our internal system.

 

Any insight or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[xendrome]

What DNS servers are you using, what are they running. Are they internal/external? You shouldn't need to have any type of alias or anything if it's a publicly resolvable DNS name.

[Seizure1990]

Sorry, I forgot to put details into the post, rather then just the (admittedly vague) tags. We are using Windows 2012 R2 to manage a variety of things, including DNS. And yes, it's a publicly resolvable domain, but as I said, the same exact domain is used for our internal network, thus, by default directs to 10.10.10.6, rather then the public IP address of our external website.

[xendrome]

So computers are computername.domain.com and your website is say www.domain.com.

You should have an A Record pointing your external IP of the web-server to www.domain.com in your DNS records, and making sure you are not using http://domain.com to browse the site.

But you said http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com both take just as long?

Also maybe take a look at this - http://www.itgeared.com/articles/1005-active-directory-domain-name/

[Seizure1990]

Yes, I do have an A record for www, as well as the parent directory, which points to the proper IP. Yet, even when using www.domain.org, it takes a long time. I forgot to mention that when you do type it in like that, it ends up being converted to domain.org anyways so I suspect that on the web host's end, they are directing all requests back to domain.org, making my A records useless. Does that make sense?

 

Anyways, as for the fact that our AD domain is domain.org, that is unfortunately something beyond me. The previous technician set it up that way, even though I myself would have set it up on local.domain.org for simplicity sake and saved us a lot of headaches. I did try migrating us to the local domain, but I had issues. Having said that, we had LOTS of issues when I tried that, many of which I fixed since. Perhaps a migration would work now.

 

I was hoping to have a quick fix for the website though, until I can manage to do that.

[+BudMan MVC]

"he same exact domain is used for our internal network"

 

Not a good idea!!

 

So what is the real domain, it sure isn't domain.org -- I want to look at it what resolve pubic and from where.  You do not host your own external dns off your AD dns servers this 2012r2 box do you?

 

Where do you clients point for dns?  It should only be your AD dns server..  Do a simple query for www.domain.org (using your real domaing) does it resolve the internal IP address..  Your saying it resolves to local IP of 10.10.10.6 -- well then that should be pretty much instant..

 

From a client machine do nslookup and then set debug.

 

C:\>nslookup
Default Server:  pfSense.local.lan
Address:  192.168.9.253

> set debug
> www.domain.org
Server:  pfSense.local.lan
Address:  192.168.9.253

------------
Got answer:
    HEADER:
        opcode = QUERY, id = 2, rcode = NXDOMAIN
        header flags:  response, auth. answer, want recursion, recursion avail.
        questions = 1,  answers = 0,  authority records = 0,  additional = 0

    QUESTIONS:
        www.domain.org.local.lan, type = A, class = IN

------------
------------
Got answer:

 

And post that full output...  Notice how looked for www.domain.org.local.lan first -- this is suffix search..  Wonder if that is causing you problems?  Please post the whole ouput.. you can replace whatever your real domain is with domain.org if you must.. 

 

Also are your browsers using a proxy?  Or do they directly access the internet?  A great test would be sniffing on a client and then going to your website www.domain.org, make sure you do a ipconfig /flushdns first so that we get to see the dns queries in the sniff as well.

 

As to www.domain.org being converted back to domain.org -- so that is setup on your website, that is not a dns related mechanism..  That is a mod rewrite doing that or other method once you hit your website..  We will see what happens with the nslookup debug.

 

while the nslookup debug is helpful - to be honest nslookup is a horrific tool for dong any real dns troubleshooting.  I would really suggest you grab dig.. Its part of the bind install, you can just install the tools for windows so you can use dig https://www.isc.org/downloads/

[Seizure1990]

I installed ISC BInd as you recommended, and ran nslookup on our domain as well as dig. I replaced our actual domain with "domain" and ***'d the first three octets of our website's IP address, but the results are otherwise unedited.

 

nslookup:

>"C:\Program Files\ISC BIND 9\bin\nslookup.exe" domain.org
Server:         10.10.10.6
Address:        10.10.10.6#53


Name:   domain.org
Address: 10.10.10.6
Name:   domain.org
Address: **.***.***.171


>"C:\Program Files\ISC BIND 9\bin\nslookup.exe" www.domain.org
Server:         10.10.10.6
Address:        10.10.10.6#53


Name:   www.domain.org
Address: **.***.***.171

dig:

>"C:\Program Files\ISC BIND 9\bin\dig.exe" domain.org


; <<>> DiG 9.10.2-P2 <<>> domain.org
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 32494
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1


;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;domain.org.                   IN      A


;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.org.            600     IN      A       10.10.10.6
domain.org.            600     IN      A       **.***.***.171


;; Query time: 3 msec
;; SERVER: 10.10.10.6#53(10.10.10.6)
;; WHEN: Thu Jul 16 16:43:15 Eastern Daylight Time 2015
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 72


>"C:\Program Files\ISC BIND 9\bin\dig.exe" www.domain.org


; <<>> DiG 9.10.2-P2 <<>> www.domain.org
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5993
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1


;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.domain.org.               IN      A


;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.domain.org.        3600    IN      A       **.***.***.171


;; Query time: 2 msec
;; SERVER: 10.10.10.6#53(10.10.10.6)
;; WHEN: Thu Jul 16 16:43:27 Eastern Daylight Time 2015
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 60

 

Thanks for any help!

[Seizure1990]

As for your question about a proxy, we are definitely not. All our machines have a direct connection to the internet, and this problem occurrs on personal machines as well (such as my laptop) which have no problem outside of the office.

[+BudMan MVC]

;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.org.            600     IN      A       10.10.10.6
domain.org.            600     IN      A       **.***.***.171

 

Why do you have 2 entries here.. You have one for private site the 10.x address and then one for public -- that going to be a problem!!

 

You didn't set debug, with dig you can do +trace

 

But can tell you right now that is a problem where you have 2 A records for your domain.org -- so 1 time you might get 10 other time public, with a ttl of 10 minutes until they forget that and ask again which again then is 50/50 shot they get the one they want.  Is your website hosted on 10.10.10.6 ?

 

Do you want your using access domain.org or www.domain.org?  And I have to assume the site is hosted pubic right?  So resolving it to 10 going to be a problem

[binaryzero]

Split brain DNS ugh.

 

Use .local, .internal, .company, something other than your public dns name.  

[Seizure1990]

  On 17/07/2015 at 12:22, Jared- said:

Split brain DNS ugh.

 

Use .local, .internal, .company, something other than your public dns name.  

You didn't read the in between posts, huh? Tsk tsk.

 

@BudMan: Woops, sorry about forgetting the debug argument.

 

As for the double entry... the A entry for the website is static and was added by me. However, the 10.10.10.6 entry is dynamic, and seems to be automatically made by Windows. I was afraid that if I remove it, some sort of functionality might break? Of course, that could be a worthless worry, and everything will be just fine. I guess the other question would be, how do I prevent Windows 2012 from just automatically recreating the entry again, which seems to be something it does?

[+BudMan MVC]

On that interface uncheck auto registration.

 

 

But that should not be registered since there is no host..

 

This is why you don't use the same ad domain as your public.

 

Your other option is have the site use www.domain.com vs redirecting to domain.com  Then you can remove your public entry for domain.com in your AD.

[Seizure1990]

I've already requested that the site redirect to www, but at the time we had.... some issues in regards to the IT management   I'll leave it at that, but as it happens, we are switching hosts now, and the people who made my job harder are more or less out of the picture. I have made sure to specifically request our website redirect to www.

 

However, many people will simply type "huairou.org" into the browser regardless, so it would be nice to get this working in either case.

 

I am leaving the country this Sunday though for two and a half weeks, and am VERY reluctant to make any changes that could possibly break things until I get back. Is there any way this would cause something to break?

[+BudMan MVC]

well remove it and test..  It shouldn't  domain.org is not used in accessing the domain that is for sure.

[Seizure1990]

I will make the changes this coming Monday and report back. Thanks for the help thus far!

[Seizure1990]

Hey, sorry for the longer then expected wait! I just made those changes you recommended, and everything seems to be working perfectly now! I guess my next project is to try and migrate our domain over to the local FQDN...

Thanks for all the help!