Log of Websites Accessed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve Kapp
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Steve Kapp

President of company wants a listing of websites accessed
by employees. CIO says that a general listing could be
obtained from a cache or log on our DNS. DHCP configures
our workstations to two internal DNS servers (primary and
secondary). Does anyone know where this file or cache
is, or how I configure it to start logging?
 
Steve-

C:\WINNT\system32\dns

The file is dns.log.

However, you need to configure the DNS server to log in order to get the
information you want. Right-click your DNS server name in DNS Manager, then
go to Properties. From there, go to the Logging tab. I think you'll only
need to check the Query and Questions tab... and from that, the log should
contain the information you want (along with other junk you don't want).

A better solution is to use a proxy server (ISA server) or other third-party
software that can maintain the URL's visited in a more readable format and
generate reports and such...
 
Thanks. I had an idea that that was the file associated
with the logging, but it was empty. The configuration
procedure is what I was looking for.
 
President of company wants a listing of websites accessed
by employees. CIO says that a general listing could be
obtained from a cache or log on our DNS. DHCP configures
our workstations to two internal DNS servers (primary and
secondary). Does anyone know where this file or cache
is, or how I configure it to start logging?
Click to expand...

This doesn't give any indication of web sites accessed, only name
queries and they're resolution. Your firewall or proxy logs will show
the actual requests.

Jeff
 
In
Steve Kapp said:
President of company wants a listing of websites accessed
by employees. CIO says that a general listing could be
obtained from a cache or log on our DNS. DHCP configures
our workstations to two internal DNS servers (primary and
secondary). Does anyone know where this file or cache
is, or how I configure it to start logging?
Click to expand...

As everyone said, a Proxy or ISA server will give this to you in explicit
URLs. Reading teh DNS logs don't necessarily reflect exactly what site they
are seeing. Domain names can be munged due to websites redirecting the URL
and therefore additional domain queries will be present and just difficult
to discern what is what.

You can also use other 3rd party apps (similar to Proxy) that will do this
and give you readable reports that tell you in English the exact URLs that
were visited, as the others mentioned.


--
Regards,
Ace

Please direct all replies to the newsgroup so all can benefit.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2000, MCSE+I, MCSA, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Active Directory
 
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