Windows Server SP1 and Windows XP SP2 (and probabably other versions of Windows) seem to have a limit on the ‘length’ of the ‘DNS Suffix Search List’ that can be defined. I ran across this when setting a list of DNS Suffixes via Group Policy. The entire list as configured in Group Policy was passed to the client machine, and displayed fully when running the command “ipconfig /all”; however the last entry was getting truncated when performing DNS lookups from most programs. I examined the list and discovered that the cut-off character was the 255th character in the list… I doubt that’s a cooincidence! Note that in Group Policy the list of suffixes is defined as a comma-seperated list of domain names. The commas do count in that 255 character limit. I blame the DNS service, as the Group Policy and Regisistry, and the output of ipconfig /all all display the full list of suffixes.
More information on setting the DNS Suffix Search list can be found in this MS KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/275553
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