Adding DNS query forwarding IP addresses in Windows 2003 DNS Server

DNS query forwarding is so important on a network. DNS services resolve computer names like nelson.helpdeskgeek.com into an IP address like 38.56.78.23 and vice versa. This allows computers to communicate with each other. Windows 2003’s DNS server primary job is to serve your network, local computers use Windows 2003 DNS service to find each other, but here comes the tricky part, computers on your network also need to be able to resolve Internet-based computer names.

By configuring a DNS query forwarding, your internal DNS server will forward any request that cannot resolve on its own database to another DNS server you specify, your local DNS gets the information from one of those servers, and pass it back to the computer requesting for the info.

When we first started setting up our testing network, the first configuration we performed on windows 2003 was DNS server, we only did the installation with nothing else. In this post, I will show you how to setup query forwarding on DNS server 2003. Read previous posts on this topic from the links below.

• Install and Configure DNS on Windows Server 2003
• How to setup a testing network using VMware server-VMware server installation
• Windows 2003 Active Directory Setup:dcpromo

To setup DNS query forwarding on your DNS server, login to your server, and click on the following sequence on the start menu: Start>All Programs>Administrative Tools>DNS select the DNS server and double-click on Forwarder on the right hand side:

This window will pop-up:

For our forwarding IP addresses we will use the free DNS services from opendns.com which includes the following IP addresses.

1. 208.67.222.222
2. 208.67.220.220

Type those two IP addresses on the IP addresses list window, and click on Add:

Once you finish adding the two IP addresses, click on Apply and then OK. Now your DNS server should be able to query the OpenDNS servers for external IP name resolutions. neat.