DNS/DHCP Server

[AnthraX]

I am going to be hosting a LAN party at my school next friday and I am setting up a DHCP and DNS server on the same system.

The DHCP works great and is awesome, very easy to set up. The DNS is having problems. I brought it into work today, and my coworker helped me test it out. He did 'nslookup' a couple times on some of the servers clients and found that the DNS server wasn't configured correctly and that's probably why it wasn't working. He would have helped me configure it, but he is a Linux nut and wasn't sure how to configure it in Windows, and plus he had a **** load of work to do today.

I would like to know how to setup a DNS server on a computer that already has DHCP. There will be no internet at the LAN, I dont know if that will effect anything, and also there will be no other servers. The server's OS is Windows 2003 Server.

 

[Elbatrop1]

I'm not sure why you need to use a DNS server at your LANparty...

I can see how DHCP would be useful, but DNS is something I really can't see being very useful in your situation.

Anywho, here's some good places to start:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/2cc7e9a7-086d-46b4-90c0-455b40480bed1033.mspx

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...39b70f50-3b67-4b89-813d-ab2981e58b191033.mspx

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

You don't need DNS...

 

[Law]

You don't need DNS unless you will promote the server to a domain controller and configure active directory. But if you wanted to installed DNS anyways, make sure you install it first it should be located in add/remove windows components. After that right click on your server and select "configure a DNS server" and choose "create a forward lookup zone" then "this server maintains the zone" then you type in your zone name then choose "allow both nonsecure and secure dynamic updates" then "no, it should not forward queries" (since you are not connecting to the internet, you can configure it to forward queries later to an ISP DNS server) and click finish.

Make sure you reserve an IP address for the DNS server in DHCP and configure static address for it and that you configure scope option in DHCP to give out the DNS address to the client which would be the address of your server 2003.

 

[AnthraX]

Why not use DNS? It's a nice thing to have, I've been to a LAN party having one, and it was very nice. We do a lot of file sharing, and browsing through the network can be a pain for a lot of people because they don't know how to do sometimes. With the DNS it shows what everyone is sharing in My Network Places and makes browsing through the network faster.

 

[Law]

Only if you have a domain setup, I'm not sure how DNS will function in a workgroup environment though, because it suppose to referer other machine as computer1.yourdomain.com and you can only have a domain if you are running active directory.

 

[AnthraX]

DNS is used to translate IP's to friendly names. It doesn't necessarily have to be a domain.DNS doesn't have to run with a domain controller. Well, at least it doesn't with Linux because my coworker has it set up at home right now. Hopefully you can do the same with Windows 2003 Server.

This is how my coworker explained it all to me. On a LAN, the computer that has been up the longest is seen by others as the server. When you request to go to someone's computer using the computer like in the run command, it goes to the computer that has been on the network and asks that computer which IP goes to what name. If you request to go to someone's computer using the IP, it asks all the computers on the network which computer has that IP. This is a real drag when sharing files on the network. Some computers aren't seen, and some computers can't connect to others. With a DNS it'll show everyone. If you want to connect to someone's computer through a computer name, the DNS already knows which computer has that computer name, which IP it has, and where it's located so it's a significant decrease in lag time.

It sounds really awesome to me, and I want to get it working, but it's being dumb. Or maybe I'm being dumb and doing something wrong. I'm still working on it though. I still have about a week.