Question : Can't view local website by external name

We just made the move to host our website in house. All is well except we cannot view it from inside. Our 2003 domain is xyz.local. The website is xyz.com. When a user puts in xyz.com into a browser it doesn't connect. When xyz.local is put in, it connects. I believe I have to set up a DNS forward so that any request to the .com will point to the local IP.

The workstations cannot ping the external IP of the website, and therefor will not be able to view it. They can ping the internal IP and can of course view it either numerically or by name with .local, not .com (as stated above).

What needs to be done do that any request by a workstation to zyx.com points to the internal IP?

We had this same problem with a network in which the local domain abc.com was the same as the website abc.com. I then made A record www in DNS and everything worked. But these are .local and .com.

Please help!!

Answer : Can't view local website by external name

you have to create a new forward lookup zone in DNS for xyz.com.  Then you have to create a www A record for the internal IP address. your clients are asking your DNS server to resolve a computer on a domain for which it is not authoritative, so it is forwarding the request to an internet DNS server which won't point to your internal server.