> Whatever that means...

The NSLOOKUP timeouts told me what your first four DNS servers were in
Windows.  But that's neither here nor there now.

> I've never understood this DNS stuff.

I was getting that impression. :))

> Well it is a web server also, hosting several domains.  Each domain has
> to have an entry in the DNS manager, no?  Therefore DNS *IS* running on
> this IIS 5 box.

If  you  are  running  a  DNS  server  on  the  box, you won't have to
*extrapolate*  that it's running from other factors--you should *know*
whether it's running by checking Services for 'DNS Server.'

But you're confused about WHY you may be running DNS on the box. IIS 5
does  not  consult  a local DNS server to find out what web sites it's
hosting. It already knows, through direct configuration, whether it is
to answer for certain HTTP requests and where to get corresponding web
pages.  IOW,  a  server  that  is  only a web server not only does not
require, but generally does not run DNS for performance reasons.

Requirements  change  if  your web server is also a mail server, since
mail  servers  do  require  DNS  lookups  before they can send mail to
remote  servers.  But  it  is  *not*  necessary to run that DNS on the
*same* box as the mail server--there simply needs to be *a* DNS server
available.  If your only other available DNS servers are across a very
slow  wire or are overtaxed, or you know that the benefits to IMail of
having  a  DNS server "close to home" will not be undercut by DNS' own
resource  demands,  it  is  certainly  possible  to run it on the same
box--but it is not mandatory.

So, if you still think that it's necessary to have DNS running on this
box,  you  *must*  make sure that DNS is configured correctly. If it's
not,  IMail  will not get info when it needs it. And "correctly" means
only  one thing: it has to be able to return MX records for any domain
on the Internet, *every time*. It can do this through either recursion
or forwarders (look these up in DNS Server Help). Doesn't matter which
(well,  it does for performance, but later for that), it just needs to
be consistent!

-Sandy


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