Unable to access web based email from network

I have a windows 2000 server network with 5 workstations. I also have an IntelExpress 9510 ISDN router for Internet connection. The Internet access & email (pop email from ISP) is working fine. I recently setup a domain name and a web based email. If i used a standalone computer with a 56K modem dial up, i can access our web based email through http://mail.myserver.com:8383. However, if i access the same site using my network's ISDN connection, an error says "The page cannot be displayed..." What is the problem?

I have verified the following :
1. My IP address is not block by my ISP/email hosting's ISP
2. port 8383 is not disable (i can access other domain's web based email)

When i tried to ping mail.myserver.com, results says "unable to resolve target system name mail.myserver.com ". Tracert return "unknown host "

When i ping from a standalone computer (not connected to the netwok), an ip address returns.

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

Is this mail.myserver.com webmail server on your network? Are you trying to access this from within your network? The problem is most likely DNS. If you're trying to hit the server from the internal network you'll need an internal IP address and DNS zone/entry. From a workstation on the internal network, try using the server's host name to ping and connect instead of the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), "mail.myserver.com ".

 

Thanks for your reply. The mail server is hosted somewhere else(not within my LAN). I have found a way to solve this though, i put an entry in the hosts file and now it works. I wonder this is a good solution... may be you can advise... Thanks

 

johr - for a small network like yours, a hosts file entry is probably the way to go.

The only time hosts files aren't such a great idea is when you have lots of systems (since you would have to tweak each hosts file) or when the information is changing frequently.

There simply has to be some mechinism in place to translate a "people" name like mail.myserver.com to an IP address that your computer can deal with.

Hosts, LMHosts will both do nicely (with LMHosts haveing more features if you need them). WINS was a Microsoft effort that worked pretty well but wasn't really suited to the internet with a broad mixture of operating systems to deal with. DNS is a nice, automated way to handle things and scales nicely to fit the huge size of the internet.

But the bottom line is - these systems all pretty much do the same thing which is the name to IP translation.