Okay, I think I've figured out the issue -- it's one of two things. Either:
A. Your web browser is set up to use a proxy, and the proxy will not route traffic out to the Internet that it knows is bound for the internal network (it would be a waste of bandwidth.) The domain name
Example Web Page is set up to not use the proxy -- but it doesn't exist internally, you need
http://example. -- or,
b. Your internal DNS server is refusing to return an internal IP for
Example Web Page, or is returning the external IP instead, so your web browser can't find the site.
There are a few solutions here:
1.) In your web browser, turn off the proxy. In IE, this is under Tools->Internet Options->Connections->LAN Settings. In Firefox it's easier to find. In any case, configure it to not use a proxy, and most importantly, not to "automatically detect settings." This should fix the issue... but with the browser configured that way, you won't be able to use any real Internet sites. This will fix case A.
2.) Ping the site (i.e. go to a DOS prompt and type "ping example", if example is the internal name of the site.) See the IP address it uses. Then add a line to the file c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts that says "aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd www.example.com", where aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is the IP address. That should mean that on
that computer you can access the site as
Example Web Page. (You may need a reboot to commit this, though.) This will fix case B.
3.) If you really need it to work on both names both internally and externally, on all computers and not just yours, then you need to talk to whoever administers the DNS and/or proxy infrastructure for the network. This can't be fixed in IIS -- you need either a.) to add the name
Example Web Page to the internal DNS server with the internal IP (from option 2) on it, or b.) set up the proxy server (probably an ISA box) to consider this IP external and allow access to it.
