[anoble1]

Hi,

I am trying to make a Domain Controller at my house. I am running Server 2008. On the server:

Under IPv4 do I need to create my own personal IP address and make the Subnet 255.255.255.0? Also do I need to make the Default gateway the ip address of my modem?

Then What does the DNS need to be? The IP address that I made up above as such:

IP: 192.168.1.254

Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 192.168.1.1 ---- This is my modem IP

DNS1: 192.168.1.254

DNS2: ??????

Does that look correct?

[Tripredacus]

You do not even need a default gateway. But the real question is, what do you want your DC to do? Do you want it to access the internet?

[anoble1]

Maybe some roaming profiles, home network. I do want it to access the internet, and for all my PC's be apart of the Server's DOMAIN. And to setup some security policy's.

[Tripredacus]

Do you have a router already or are you going to use the server as the router?

[anoble1]

Yeah, all I have is a modem, and a wireless router.

[Tripredacus]

Well your first post makes me think you have the server connected directly to the modem. Where does the wireless router fit in? Does it have ethernet ports? What model is it?

[anoble1]

I have a D-Link DGL-4500. See below
modem - DGL-4500 - Server

[Tripredacus]

Connect 1 PC via ethernet to the router. Configure to obtain IP automatically. Verify that you can access the internet. Drop to a CMD and run ipconfig -all, recording these for the Ethernet connection:

- IP Address
- Subnet mask
- Default Gateway
- DNS server

Log into your router and change its DHCP IP Scope to allow at least 10 IPs it won't assign. So if it currently is set up to assign 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.254, then Change it so the scope starts at 192.168.1.10 or so. After doing this, release/renew the PC and verify internet access.

On the server, set a static IP on the NIC using an IP outside of the router's scope, for example 192.168.1.5. Use the Subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server that the PC had gotten. Verify access to the internet by pinging google.com (I will never recommend that you actually surf the internet with a server, but that's up to you).

Now the obvious next step would be to run DCPROMO, but there is a problem where I can't help you any further. There are other things you are going to have to find out about your router, specifically:
- how to add A record to the DNS so your clients can use FQDNs. You might actually need to do this before running DCPROMO.
- how to allow wireless clients ability to see physical devices. Most consumer routers have an internal firewall between the different network types.

[allen2]

As he will run AD on the server, i would disable dhcp on the router and use the server as dhcp server and configure it to set dns ip with its address instead of allowing the client computer to use internet dns defined by the router. If you don't do this step you'll have bad time with your AD client computers not seeing properly the DC.
Also AD should have at least 2 DC so you should install at least 2 servers (virtual or physical) if you don't do this you "might" sometime need to reboot all client computers after rebooting the DC to allow them to communicate properly.
What wasn't said and is requirement for a properly working AD, you'll need to properly configure the DC to use a reliable time server as it will be the source of time for the client computers (a five minutes time difference might completely block communication between two AD machines).
Another important point is the AD dns domain name shouldn't be already used or a possible internet dns domain name (for example if you used myad.com as AD dns domain name, you might encounter AD problems as it is already internet registered ). For this matter, usually using anything with strictly more than 3 characters as extension will solve this easily (example mydomain.myad will do perfectly fine).
If you configure the dhcp server properly it should automatically register the client computer in the dns server.