Our network configuration is public IP's nat'd to non-routable IP's behind a hardware firewall.

Everything, so far, with cPanel seems to be working okay, but I'm really confused about how to handle nameserver hosting for our customers...

The IP's entered into the "add account" will assign internal addresses to the zone files... so any outside DNS lookup requests will return internal addresses, not the NAT"d public IP.

Is the answer here to skip / ignore cPanel's nameserver automation and run our own external nameservers?

Any suggestions are welcome...

Scott

Update: If we do indeed want to provide authoritative nameserver service for our customers, is it possible to write a script to copy/update the zone files from the cPanel-powered, internal nameservers to a public DNS server, and use a search/replace to swap the private internal IP's with external ones?

Sounds complicated, but it would 1) allow my customers to add their own subdomains, and 2) eliminate double-entry of domain info.

I wrote cPanel support about this. I got about a one-line email back explaining they don't support NAT.

That's strange, since their own FAQ explains how to do it.

I'm looking elsewhere for hosting management software (Plesk), and if I can find somebody who can officially support a NAT environment, and stand by their own support documentation.