Advice on Internal Domain Names

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Taylor <nobody at nowhere.com> writes:

    Mark> Hi I want some advice on how to name my internal domains.
    Mark> We have a registered Domain Name (foo.co.uk for this
    Mark> example), and I need to break it down for my internal
    Mark> branches.

    Mark> This will put all our internet servers on "visible"
    Mark> foo.co.uk.  Everything on our intranet will be "non-visible"
    Mark> intranet.foo.co.uk.

    Mark> Is this the recommend approach to naming internal domains ?

I don't think there are any recommendations for this. The naming
scheme you've suggested will work OK, but it's perhaps a bit
clumsy. You'll end up with internal hostnames like
	host.branch.intranet.foo.co.uk
which is a bit of a handful. The extra typing could be a bit of a
nuisance for the internal users.

It might be better to just use host.branch.foo.co.uk internally unless
you *really* want to include another domain name component to
differentiate between external and internal hosts. [And if you do
that, there might be subtle knock-on effects on your internal mail
configuration, resolver setups and so on.] You could just use split
DNS and have two versions of foo.co.uk: one for the outside world and
one for the inside. The outside world doesn't get to see your internal
name space. The internal foo.co.uk could even be a superset of the
external one. Running the two foo.co.uk on different name servers is a
good idea too. That way it's easier to seperate the two name spaces
and prevent the internal names from leaking to the outside world.