DNS on Windows 2000, Second Edition

Chapter 13.  Troubleshooting DNS

“Of course not,” said the Mock Turtle. “Why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going on a journey, I should say, `With what porpoise?’”

“Don’t you mean `purpose'?” said Alice.

“I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied, in an offended tone. And the Gryphon added, “Come, let’s hear some of your adventures.”

In the last chapter, we demonstrated how to use nslookup to make queries. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to use nslookup -- plus traditional TCP/IP networking tools like trusty ol’ ping -- to troubleshoot real-life problems with DNS.

Troubleshooting, by its nature, is a tough subject to teach. You start with any of a world of symptoms and try to work your way back to the cause. We can’t cover the whole gamut of problems you may encounter on the Internet, but we will certainly do our best to show you how to diagnose the most common of them. And along the way, we hope to teach you troubleshooting techniques that will be valuable in tracking down more obscure problems that we don’t document.

Is DNS Really Your Problem?

Before we launch into a discussion of how to troubleshoot a DNS problem, we should make sure you know how to tell whether a problem is caused by DNS, not by another naming service. On Windows hosts, figuring out whether the culprit is actually DNS can be difficult. Windows supports a whole panoply of naming services: DNS, WINS, HOSTS, LMHOSTS, and more. The stock Windows 2000 nslookup, however, doesn’t pay any attention ...