hye buddies

i have a permanent adsl connection to an ISP who has provided us with a name server i.e a dns server ip

i have created my own mail server on vmware.....
..hence i had to create my own dns.....

.....to make my clents windows machine connect to my mail server i did the following set up :-

i left my gateway as it is ???...so that i can browse the internet

i change the preferred DNS server ip to my own DNS...
and put my ISP's DNS server in the alternate DNS server address in
the TCP/IP setting on my windows machine.....

result :-

it is unpredictable.....sometimes the connection to the mail server is disconnected ....and i have to remove the IP gateway manually to remove this fault....


....can some plzz explain me why this is happening ..and how i can bypass that....???

You need to first tell us what you or your clients want to achieve.

.

Where are the clients? Internal or external? If external then you need to open 25 port.

if you just want your clients to browse the internet and use your linux box as a router then you need iptables and set the clients gateway to linux box.

Loose the in house DNS server. It is un-nessesary, and i bet its where your problem lies. Its also an un-nessesary security risk.


Instead, use your domain name providers dns server, and update the mx records to point to your ip.