Automatic Discovery Woes

  • Article

I’ve heard tales about customers running in to difficulties when configuring automatic discovery. This is one of those tricky ISA Server configuration issues, since there’s so much interaction with other products. This interaction makes it difficult sometimes to understand the source of the problem. (Incidentally, a common cause of auto-discovery issues is DNS mis-configuration…always check that your DNS is properly configured when troubleshooting automatic discovery issues).

 

One thing that I’ve found useful is using the FwcTool to troubleshoot autodetection from a client box. You can download the tool here.

 

Another useful tool is a document that gives you more details and background on ISA Server’s automatic discovery mechanism…you can read it here.

 

But all this got me thinking…I’m pretty sure that a document on troubleshooting automatic discovery would also prove very useful. Stay tuned!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Kind of frustrating when the link it p

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2006
    For SBS you'll need to use the WPAD script that Jim developed. I beleive that the link if my blog is still good.

    When IIS is housed on the same system, you can get unusual results. Using the script works and no problems when you run the CEIW afterwards.

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2006
    Any plans on improving the response time issue for DHCP/WinInet? DHCP seems like a more scalable solution and much more simple for branch office deployments. Thanks! --Tom

  • Anonymous
    January 11, 2006
    The DHCP/WinInet problem is described at http://www.isaserver.org/articles/ISA2004_ClientAutoConfig.html.

    As far as I know it should be solved with KB907455 Internet Explorer may delay up to 10 seconds before it starts for the first time in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;907455).