Weird problem (remotely accessing shares)

dissolved

Ok, at my job we have a huge active directory structure. The domain is titled state.md.us
We have:

-a couple hundred OUs spread out throughout the state.

-We have a DC at every site, as well as DHCP and DNS server at every site.

-The ip scheme is 172.xx.xx.xx/24

-we don't use roaming profiles. All the users information (my documents, favorites etc) are stored on the file server(s) at each site. We run script logic to map the drives every time they login.

I was recently appointed the task of copying a user's documents over. The user had just moved from one division (in another part of the state), to my building. I was given the address \fileserver1\mjones$ as the location of the users drive on the old file server. I was instructed to go there and copy the files over to our local file server here. When I popped \fileserver1\mjones$ in my browser, I got an error. "cannot find location" or something like that. The funny thing was, I could ping fileserver1 no problem

So I decided to try \fileserver1.state.md.us\mjones$ and it worked. I was able to copy the files over.
Why did it work when I included the domain in the address? Are the DNS servers misconfigured?

garv221

Sometimes VPN connections like the domain name...If something was wrong with the DNS, you would have not found Fileserver1, the only way to connect to it would have been with its ip address...