Re: New kid, please help

I concede that it is probably easier to just leave the forwarders blank.

BT do offer smarthost for mail its just not very good.

even with a fixed IP from BT they will not give you a reverse entry which
causes delivery issues.

I'm pretty sure you will need a fixed IP to configure VPN


"Joe" <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dtsrk7$f5l$1$8300dec7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sparky wrote:
I'm currently setting up SBS 2003 for a company I work for. Have no
experience of servers before at all. At the moment I have SBS Server and
two workstation plus a wireless access point all plugged into a Netgear
ADSL modem router which connects to the net for me. It is currently on
BT standard broadband package which has a dynamic IP address and no fixed
DNS servers. BT wont give me the DNS servers either. The router is
acting as the DHCP server.

Lots of SBS things don't work well unless it is the DHCP server. It MUST
be the DNS server for the LAN workstations. Best if it is both.

In the wizard for internet connection, DNS server IPs are required which
I don't have - is there anyway around upgrading the broadband connection
to one which will give me the DNS info?

Leave this entry in the wizard blank. SBS doesn't need a DNS forwarder,
it just cuts down the load on the Internet Root DNS servers if it uses
one. If used without a forwarder, SBS will query the Root servers
itself. That's likely to give better results than using the router.
All DNS servers are not equal, and a small router is not likely
to have industrial-strength DNS.

When running ConnectComputer on my clients I get an error (sorry I don't
remember the wording) about DNS and DHCP. Why?

See above. This is one of the fussier functions. Disable DHCP on the
router, make sure it is running on the server (look in Services). Set
the TCP/IP properties of the workstation LAN connection to get IP
address and DNS information automatically. Preferably reboot the
workstation, open a command line prompt and type ipconfig /all.
Check that the DNS and WINS entries show the server LAN NIC IP
address. Pretty well nothing will work properly until you get that
far.

Do I need a fixed IP address for VPN connections. There is no company
website although there is one from which I may be able to get a
www.mail.company.com domain so should this be used instead.

You don't need it, but it makes life easier. There are dynamic
DNS companies which will keep track of your IP address. Try
http://www.dyndns.com, and there are others.

What may be much more serious is that some of the BT dynamic
IP addresses are on mail blacklists (yes, I do speak from experience)
and you may find that, some of the time, mail is refused by some
organisations. Since BT don't offer the use of a smarthost, this
is quite serious. Again, there are companies which offer smarthost
services, but this adds to the cost. I think BT will add a fixed IP
address for an additional £10 a month. However, the Net is becoming
a more difficult place to send email, and a few ISPs are quite fussy
and you may eventually need to use a smarthost, at least for some
destinations. I assume you've just started a minimum-period contract
with BT and are stuck with them, but you should probably look around
for someone better. It's a bit naughty not to offer DNS with *all*
packages, as without it there's almost nothing you can use the Net for.
Web browsers need DNS too.

Did BT supply the router, by the way? If so, you may find that it
doesn't accept incoming connections. I had a client which did have a
BT package including the word 'business', and they got a crippled
router, no DNS and no smarthost. I wasn't consulted before they
committed to a year of that. Fortunately, they didn't use email
heavily at that time and had retained their dial-up account as
backup, so they sent mail that way and used that company's DNS
servers.

BT supplies all the non-cable ADSL facilities in the UK, but they
are a lousy ISP, as you've discovered.

My apologies for the long and probably confusing post, I would be very
grateful for any help.


Hope this is enough. My major client and I both use Demon, which is
not as good as it used to be but isn't bad. Andrews and Arnold are
well thought of for small businesses, and their 'domestic' service
is fine for light business use. They do explicitly allow it, as some
don't.


.

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