I work as a consultant and every time I visit a client site with my "workgroup" computer I go nuts trying to access their infrastructure from websites to domain names. This is especially annoying with respect to SharePoint because clients often do not have Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) configured for the fully qualified domain names. You can get around this problem by adding entries to your hosts file located in C:WindowsSystem32driversetc but that gets a little tiresome. Today I was finally fed up with swapping out hosts files and decided to apply some of my newly found DNS prowess that I gained while building out a virtualized SharePoint farm on my laptop.

The Problem

When I attempt to HTTP or RDP into a client machine while plugged into a client network I get a 404 or server not found response.  A quick solution at some locations is to use the FQDN such as resource.corp.companyname.com or resource.local, but this is hit or miss especially with SharePoint.

The Previous Solution

Well normally I would handle this by either using the FQDN, updating my hosts file, or using the client’s VPN. The VPN adapters will, more often than not, provide their own DNS allowing you to quickly and easily access corporate resources. The downside of using the VPN is, of course, the unpredictability and, in my case, incompatibility of the VPN client with a 64 bit OS.

The Solution

Open your control panel, network connections and select your active network connection (for that client).

Step 1

In the network configuration screens right mouse key on your active network connection and choose properties.

Step 2

In the connection properties window select the Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and select properties.

Step 4

In the properties window of the IPv4 protocol choose advanced

Step 5

In the advanced window enter the DNS suffix for your current client site. This suffix should represent the DNS that you would use when accessing their datacenter hosted servers, keep in mind this might be different from the DNS suffix that you might use for workstations (ergo don’t rely on ipconfig /all).

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