I have to manually change the DNS suffix order every time I connect to VPN. Can I change this permanently or fix the problem somehow?

Posted by CarlB on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by CarlB
Published on 2010-11-17T06:39:26Z Indexed on 2011/01/06 16:55 UTC
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Sorry in advance but I'm a programmer, not a network engineer, so I'm a noob at this stuff. Anyway, when I am not connected to VPN from my work PC at home, I have the following DNS suffixes listed (real domain names substituted):

  1. enterprise.org
  2. network.org
  3. company.com
  4. us.enterprise.org

After connecting to VPN, one more DNS suffix is added to the very top of the list:

problem-domain.com

At this point, most network functions that I can normally perform when actually connected to the LAN in the office are unusable. I get error messages about the network paths not being found and what-not. Anyway, I played around with the suffixes and realized that if I just moved problem-domain.com down one spot to the second in the list, all the problems went away.

Unfortunately, it returns to the top spot every time I reconnect, and I tend to get disconnected frequently. Is there something else I can do about this or should I just contact the IT department? I've had this problem before and they weren't able to resolve it but I suppose it would be worth trying again if I could get a different person on the job.

What I don't understand is that I thought it didn't matter what order the suffixes were in? Isn't Windows supposed to go through each suffix until it finds a match (or has gone through all the suffixes)? Why is it quitting after the first one?

Thanks in advance.

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