Internal domain users can't connect to external website

[onsitetechsri]

We took over a client that has a dc and file server. Everything was running great until today when the intern as the company raised a ticket stating that she could not access the company website. She had moved it from HostGator to Wix.

I tried to access the website from my office and had no problem. Logged on to the server remotely and realised that the local domain and the external domain is the same format "company.com" I thought OK I will just look in the DNS manager and find the www host A record that is pointing to the Hostgator server and change it to point to the Wix server.

I changed the IP to the new address, did an Ipconfig /flushdns and tried to access the website from a browser on the server. No luck. No matter what i do it will enter www.www.company.com. It adds an extra www.

When I ping www.company.com it returns the correct IP address. I have no clue what I'm missing here.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Markverhyden]

Did you run a host command against the domain, internal and external? Who is hosting the DNS?

 

[onsitetechsri]

NSlookup returns the right ip local and external. Wix is hosting the dns. No problem accessing the website outside the domain. No problem accessing any other website besides thecompany one.

 

[Markverhyden]

If I do a search on "what causes www.www" Wix is the first hit interestingly enough. So maybe it's an undocumented feature. Did the DNS change from somewhere else to Wix? When one get's the www.www I seem to remember somewhere the root domain record got changed from rootdomain.com to www.rootdomain.com. Or something like that.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Logged on to the server remotely and realised that the local domain and the external domain is the same format "company.com" I thought OK I will just look in the DNS manager and find the www host A record that is pointing to the Hostgator server and change it to point to the Wix server.

I changed the IP to the new address, did an Ipconfig /flushdns and tried to access the website from a browser on the server. No luck. No matter what i do it will enter www.www.company.com. It adds an extra www.

When I ping www.company.com it returns the correct IP address. I have no clue what I'm missing here.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Look in the rest of dnsmgmt.msc for the old IP, might have had some wildcard record or @...

 

[mr m]

I changed the IP to the new address, did an Ipconfig /flushdns and tried to access the website from a browser on the server. No luck. No matter what i do it will enter www.www.company.com. It adds an extra www.

Did you also wipe the browsers or routers cache of DNS entries?

 

[onsitetechsri]

Still no luck. I did find this online about wix:

"
You cannot access the website from within the network, without it pointing to the Domain controller. In the past I created a WWW "A" record in DNS to link to the website's direct IP.

We have recently switched to WIX and since they have server farms you cannot access the site by only entering the IP address. (so WWW record does not work)"

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/812984-internal-domain-name-website-name-issues/

 

[onsitetechsri]

Look in the rest of dnsmgmt.msc for the old IP, might have had some wildcard record or @...

Yes checked and found nothing. If I enter the old IP address in as the www record it gives me the Hostgator "website no longer available" page as it should.

I think this is a Wix issue and not the DNS on the internal server.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

If the clients internal domain name is the same as their public FQDN...you do have go to the servers DNSMGMT.MSC and change any records such as WWW or MX. They will not reflect what their registrar says...as the server thinks it also owns the public domain since it's ".com" instead of ".local".

 

[onsitetechsri]

If the clients internal domain name is the same as their public FQDN...you do have go to the servers DNSMGMT.MSC and change any records such as WWW or MX. They will not reflect what their registrar says...as the server thinks it also owns the public domain since it's ".com" instead of ".local".

Yep changed the www to the new IP from wix and that is when I get www.www.company.com in the browser. That does not happen with the old IP.

 

[Markverhyden]

Is IIS running?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yep changed the www to the new IP from wix and that is when I get www.www.company.com in the browser. That does not happen with the old IP.

But if you ping it from your computer at home or at your office (or any computer outside of this clients LAN)...you get a correct resolve?
And opening a browser and going to the website from any computer outside of clients LAN results in a standard URL and behavior? If so...I'd say the problem isn't the registrar/public DNS host (WIX or whatever)..I'd still be focusing on the zone and records in this servers DNSMGMT.