Unable to access company intranet website using mac os x

mobiletaurus said:

Recently, our company has created intranet for staff to access.
Those Windows users have no problem to access it.
However, those Mac OS X users were not able to access it.
I use a Macbook Pro to join domain and try troubleshooting.
They are accessing to the same url link http://intranet
Whenever, the mac users type this link http://intranet in Safari, it will show a page saying that "Safari can't find the server."
Whenever, the mac users type this link http://intranet in Firefox (Mac version), it will bring them to a page with www.intranet.com.
Please advise. Thanks.

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Are you sure you have the right address, the above links all are non functional, reason is I think they are incomplete.
I never had problems accessing my companies intranet but it had much more in it than just http://intranet

The one they used before was http://star***.intranet.com or http://intranet.star***.com, can't remember if the first or second was correct.

mobiletaurus said:

Hi justperry,

It is valid.
It is a company internal network "Intranet".
My Windows users land on this page content http://intranet

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You try to access from within the company or from outside over the internet?

Shouldn't it be https?

Edit: Do you have bootcamp/windows, try from there, also do you have the IP number of that one, maybe that one works.
If not maybe you should contact the network Admin's

Windows or mac dosen't matter it's about your browser but I think you type the address wrong or you need to use ssl (https).

ask your IT. nothing to do with windows over mac.

Could be your Mac users don't have a default domain defined in their TCP/IP settings. Try the fully qualified name - http://server.intranet.com

Suppose, you should do some DNS sorcery

mobiletaurus said:

Hi all,

After attempting a few troubleshooting, I tried to add in the intranet server IP address in a iMac local host file, it was successfully load and show the intranet.
So, I confirmed that the Mac is not able to resolve the DNS from the windows DNS server even though I have joined this Mac to domain and ensured the DNS and DHCP server settings are set too.
Any gentlemen have any suggested solution to this problem?
If my company plan to buy additional 20 more Macs, I do not think manually add in the intranet ip address in each Mac local host file is sensible. Any thing can be done on the Windows Server side?

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First of all, your Mac should be configured for the search domain. In common case it is ".local" DNS suffix, added automatically to resolve single-worded URLS to FQDN, but you may have different in your company intranet.
You should consult with your network administrator first, and when you get the proper "search domain", configure your Mac' network settings for each adapter (mean Lan/Wifi) under Advanced button -> DNS tab -> Search Domains

My company also has a site at https://intranet, and I can access it from Safari on my Mac when connected to the local LAN through ethernet. I do not need to be joined to the domain to do this, but I do have to enter my domain login when I visit the site.

Our internal Windows Domain is CompanyName.local, which is the default that Windows Small Business Server set up years ago when we first established the domain. If I were doing it today, I would have used anything except .local as that is treated as a special name in OS X.

You might be able to solve the problem by using the FQDN in the URL :
https://intranet.companyName.local in Safari

If that doesn't work, there are some optional DNS entries that can be entered in the domain's DNS server that will make a .local domain more Mac friendly. Sorry, I don't remember the specifics of that as I only had to fix it once an it's been about 4 years now... Since the short version is working for me, you can see that it can definitely be done without editing the local host file.

Related - whether the short version (http://intranet) works or not, I personally always use the FQDN. This is because I have found that FQDN always works whether I an connected locally or over VPN remotely. When working remotely, FQDN may be required depending on the settings of the VPN client and server. Just using it all the time makes my environment consistent, which I like. A Windows IT shop is not very likely to have their VPN server configured in a way that makes OS X work properly without FQDN, and they probably don't care to support you.