local DNS not resolving for a single, specific website

Question

Our internal DNS servers (2019 standard) are setup without forwarders or conditional forwarders. Each server is set as its own IP address as its DNS server as well. We have no problems browsing to any site with the exception of goto.com. That site specifically doesn't seem to want to resolve on our servers. We can use nslookup and it simply times out. However using nslookup with a public DNS server resolves it just fine. Flushing the DNS cache doesn't seem to help and I would hate to setup a forwarder for just one website. Has anyone seen anything like this before?

Answer 1

Hi @Jeff Adamson

Have you tried enabling the DNS debug logging on the server to see if you can get more information why the request is failing to return the goto.com domain.

To enable the logging open the server properties in the DNS console and set the debug logging tab as shown, setting the file path to something that's appropriate for your server:

Then use nslookup to query the goto.com domain a couple of times.

You will need to disable the debug logging for the log to be flushed to the drive.

Review the log file and see if you get any insights why the query for goto.com is failing.

Gary.

Answer 2

Hello @Jeff Adamson

Since the site corresponds to a communications system, remote connection provider, it may not be a problem of your DNS but some type of security filter that may prevent the communication. I would look for network traces on port 53, 443 and 80/8080 from one of the affected machines, as well a traceroute to see where the communication is lost.

All in all, if setting a manual forwarder to the site works, it sounds the simpler and time efficient action to work it around.

Hope this helps with your query,

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