Can only access asp.net app on localhost

Question

I'm trying to get an asp.net application up on IIS on a Windows Server 2008 machine. I can hit the app from localhost, no problem. But I can't access the app using the server's domain name either locally or from another machine on the network.

But here's the odd part. I can access a normal file on IIS using the domain name, both from a browser running on the server and from a browser running on another machine on the network. Here's a synopsis ("http" converted to "htp" below because I don't have enough points to have all these links in my message):

From IE on the server itself:
works htp://localhost/foo.htm
works htp://localhost/App
works htp://test.foo.com/foo.htm
dead htp://test.foo.com/App

From IE on another machine:
works htp://test.foo.com/foo.htm
dead htp://test.foo.com/App

And when I say "dead" I mean the request times out.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I worked this out. Basically the app was redirecting to https, but only for remote connections, and IIS was not bound to 443.

Answer 2

Let's say your server's domain name is myServer and its IP is 192.168.2.1.

Try ping-ing the server from another machine by its domain name. In a DOS prompt type:

ping myServer

Do you get a response?

Try accessing the site on the server using the server's IP address:

http://192.168.2.1/foo.htm

If its visible by IP but not pingable by name then your issue is related to DNS. You need to

• set up IIS so the site is bound to the host name (Host Name via the Edit Bindings ... option for the site in IIS Manager).
• if you have a DNS server you need to get an admin to put entries in its lookup db for the server.
• if you don't, put an entry in your hosts file for the server.

HTH