Connection Unavailable???

[Will James]

I posted a question earlier, but it probabably didn't make much sense.

Basically, I have a connectivity problem, but I can't figure out where
exactly the problem lies.

From a remote site, I can ping my exchange server all day long, either by IP
or by host name (using hosts, lmhosts, and local DNS).

But none of my Outlook 2003 clients can connect to the exchange server
anymore. (BTW, They used to be able to. And I can't think of anything
that might have changed.)

I am highly suspicious of Active Directory. I also note that the clients at
one time were using "cached mode". I have tried to delete any .ost files,
delete any profiles, and start totally from scratch, but no luck.

One interesting thing is that I can take a laptop from the corporate office,
give it an IP on the remote site, and I can connect to the Exchange server
just fine.


It is something about how the clients are set up to use TCP/IP, or something
about how the remote DNS/WINS server is resolving the host name. But I just
don't get it. My little mind can't get around the idea that if the PC can
ping by host name, then Outlook 2003 should also be able to resolve by host
name.

It is utterly baffling to me. I am hoping someone can point me in the right
direction.

Thanks.

 

[Transam388]

First question would be are the sites on different domains? From what I
construe you are also using a 2000 or higher AD domain.? What you may try is
doing an nslookup computername.domain and see which DNS server is trying to
resolve the computer name and if it actually does. This gets more complex
though if you have different domains at the different sites. So if you can
drop a little more info I'll see if I can help. It does sound like DNS and
name resolution is the issue. Pinging will work as that just goes to the IP
but exchange uses the netbios names and if they are on different IP subnets
and / or domains DNS will probably be where you need to look.