Question

changing an internal domain name

DNS config hosting, DNS, Domain management, Domain configuration

I currently have just taken over the management of a school network. The external domain is hosted by a local ISP who hosts our web page and sends all the mail with ourname.school.nz through to a our mail server. The problem we have is the internal domain and the external domain has been given a the same name. ourname.school.nz; This means that we cannot see our external web site from anywhere on the school network. We eventually want to reconfigure the network so that we can have an internal server and at the same time access the external web page. Eventually we would like to be able to configure it so that we can login from outside.
1. What is the naming convention for internal domains.
2. What are the steps I need to do to change the internal domain name? There are 3 servers and 80 computers as part of the domain.
Thank you for your help

Hello,
first, keep in mind that when you are creating domains for local use only you'd better use a *.local domain so this will avoid your clients to search for your domain controller on the root zone DNS servers (*.com, *.eu, *.nz etc).
For the domain renaming I suggest you to use the Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Domain Rename Tools (if your Server hosting the AD is a Windows 2003); then for the client computers you can script the NETDOM utility that will allow you to join the newly created domain.

I Hope this helps