DNS server failure issue. Is it forward zone?

Question

The problem is the following:

I am using Windows 2012 server as my DNS server. I have a default gateway ( 192.168.1.1 ) and the DNS server set up (on 192.168.1.200 ). My default gateway is also my DHCP so it provides the DNS server to the clients. Clients can resolve the IPs from the local hostnames (my domain) but cannot resolve anything that lies outside on the Internet.

I launched wireshark and I realised that if I do nslookup www.google.com 192.168.1.1 it works... But by default (using my DNS server) it does not retrieve it. Even more interestingly on my DNS server I cannot resolve google.com but I can ping it (?).

I think the solution is to somehow say to the DNS --> for the local domain use my zone transfer and for ALL the other requests forward them to my default gateway. However I dont know how to do that. Any help please? I saw that for making forward transfers I have to specify the domain and obviously I cannot specify all the domains of the internet right? :P

Thanks

Answer 1

Actually, you can specify all domains of the internet by refering to the root domain: . From a DNS perspective it is just as valid to refer to any domain with a trailing dot, as the last dot signifies the root domain.

But the easier approach is to make your DNS server a master for your local zone, .local for example, and then have it forward all other requests highter up the chain to an external DNS server.