DNS issue Windows 2003 Server and wireless router

[Motorheader]

I've been assisting a friend with their very small Windows 2003 server environment for a number of years. It is very small and the programs they run do require a Windows server based environment. The person that did the initial setup and configuration is a decent programmer/script writer but was not so wise in the setup/configuration of networking. Example - they setup the name of the DC the same as the domain name on the web.

Here's what I have right now.

I'm getting slow login with original clients that were setup on the domain years ago. Everyone is setup with a roaming profile. I'm quite confident that it is a DNS issue.

The original network configuration has the wireless router (piece of crap linksys BEFW11S4) as the DHCP server. Years ago my friend also wanted to allow people wireless internet access but no domain access - no problem with that and worked great once I replaced it with a WRT54Gv3.

Well the WRT54Gv3 finally died. It has been a workhorse for over 5 years and was still running the last linksys based firmware. I think I rebooted it maybe 6 times the whole time it was setup.

I have replaced it with a WRT54G v4 running DD-WRT and successfully setup multiple BSSID's using the information on this link:

http://www.pennock.nl/dd-wrt/Multiple_BSSIDs.html

The local domain is 10.x based and the open wireless I setup as 192.x based. The Windows 2003 server is setup static 10.x ip address and is not configured to hand out IP's. The internet is provided by cable modem which is plugged into the WAN port. DD-WRT can be setup as a DHCP server(currently) via wired or wireless or DHCP forwarder (sounds like WAP to me). Currently it works as it is intended with the exception of the slow domain login. They don't need to login/logout many times, but when they do it is painfully slow.

So my questions are as follows:

- Should I setup DD-WRT as a forwarder to the server and enable DHCP on the Win2k3 server. Because there are no settings for the wireless 192.x configuration on the DD-WRT basic setup page will that break the 192.x setup? Domain users can access the server either wired or wireless and I'd like to keep the open wireless setup (on the 192.x) the way it currently is.

- Should I leave the current setup where the router stills acts as the DHCP server and adjust the DNS settings on either the router (likely), the server, or both.

Any thoughts, questions, or input are most welcome.

Thanks

 

[drebo]

Unless you can configure the DHCP server on DD-WRT to hand out the correct DNS suffix for your connection, you will want the DHCP server to be on the Windows 2003 box. In fact, you should have that on the Windows 2003 box anyway.

You can set up multiple DHCP scopes, one for your 10. and one for your 192. network. If DD-WRT can forward DHCP queries to that server, it will handle address assignments for both address scopes.

Roaming profiles can get quite large, so it's to be expected that logins will take longer and longer each time.

However, setting up DNS in your site is very important in an Active Directory environment. Without proper DNS set up on the DNS server, and if the clients aren't pointing to a DNS server that has the AD-specific SRV records correctly configured on it, you will have trouble. It will fall back to NetBIOS, which is spotty and slow at best, and completely worthless at worst.

 

[her209]

Is the purpose of the wireless setup to allow for guests or for employees or both?

You could use the DHCP server on the router for wireless clients or have it forward the DHCP requests to the Windows 2003 Server. I would definitely install the DNS on the Windows box, point the DNS records for the clients to point to it, and set up DNS forwarding.

 

[Motorheader]

Thank you for the input. Wow - I didn't realize how large and long winded my original post was. I was just tip-tapping away.

The only reason I knew that the WRT54gv3 even went down was that people were getting ip's but no browse and no access to the server shares. No amount of reconfiguring and rebooting of the router was resolving the issue. With the WRT54Gv4 having the BSSID on 192.x and open also saves my friend the hassle having to give out config information for simple internet browsing.

drebo and her209 - The wireless is for both. With DD-WRT the BSSID of 192.x is the one that is open for all and the 10.x is the one that is for the domain users - it gives both wired and wireless IP addresses. The 10.x configuration is the one that shows up in the first basic configuration page of DD-WRT and 10.x is the ip of Win2k3 DC.

As suggested I'll probably make the router ip of 10.0.0.1 act as a DHCP passthrough to the server IP of 10.0.0.2 and setup the server to handle DNS. In the DD-WRT basic setup page though once you set it up as DHCP passthrough then router no longer handles any DNS.

I'll post back when I get it reconfigured.