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I have a Windows Server 2012 with IIS 8 installed on it. I have just one website configured which is the default web site. It contains an application which is configured as follows:

  • The physical path points to the app directory, where I have a web.config and a Service.asmx file
  • the virtual path of the app is set to /service

With this configuration, my app can be loaded via: 127.9.9.9/service/Service.asmx (let's say 127.9.9.9 is the IP of my windows server here). This works both locally on the Windows server as well as from an outside machine. So far so good.

But now I wanted to make the app accessable via a domain name, because obviously it is a better and more common solution than going via IP. So, I added a binding for my default web site in IIS with a hostname, let's call it mydomain.com. I left the other binding settings default, i.e. the binding works on port 80 and with any IP address.

After having configured the binding, the app is now also accessible via mydomain.com/service/Service.asmx, but only locally on the Windows server machine! When calling this URL from an outside machine, I just get "site not found". Of course, mydomain.com has a redirection to the Windows server, i.e. to IP 127.9.9.9. And when calling just "mydomain.com", then it successfully redirects to the Windows server, and I get to see the standard IIS welcome screen. However when trying to accessing the app (mydomain.com/service/Service.asmx") then it fails as just said.

After having done some research it seemed it's a DNS issue. So, following a tutorial, I configured a forward lookup zone, which maps the hostname mydomain.com to the IP of the app server. Note that this is not 127.9.9.9, the app server has a different IP! But as I understood, that's how it is supposed to be configured? Also, I added a reverse lookup zone for that IP. As it still didn't work, I even played around with the network adapter of the Windows server, and added the app server's IP at the top of the list of DNS ip's. But still it doesn't work.

I'm afraid I don't quite understand the DNS part fully. Maybe is there something missing in the confugration of mydomain.com? As I said, I configured a redirection ("MX") from a hostname to the Windows server IP. I don't understand why mydomain.com successfully leads me to the Windows Server start page, but mydomain.com/service/Service.asmx cannot be found.

Thank you!

Thomas
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  • I think the most correct statement in here is that you don't understand DNS fully. MX records are not "redirections". You just need an A record in the forward lookup zone. You **also** have to have the client that is attempting to access the web server pointing to the DNS server that you control for DNS. – Todd Wilcox May 04 '16 at 14:05
  • What Todd Wilcox said. MX is the Mail eXchanger record, or where email for that domain should go. [I also hope you're not really using 127.9.9.9 for your server.](http://serverfault.com/questions/157496/why-is-loopback-ip-address-from-127-0-0-1-to-127-255-255-254) – Katherine Villyard May 04 '16 at 22:32

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