Here we present more technical information about the network and how it works in case you have more specific needs from the network.
The DNS provides an automatic lookup mechanism to translate IP network names into IP addresses and vice versa. The DNS domain name for Newcastle University is ncl.ac.uk. The DNS servers for Newcastle University are:
128.240.229.18 (dns1.ncl.ac.uk)
128.240.229.34 (dns2.ncl.ac.uk)
128.240.229.50 (dns3.ncl.ac.uk)
128.240.2.80 (dns0.ncl.ac.uk)
Windows machines can use WINS servers to lookup hostnames. The campus WINS servers are currently on:
128.240.235.119 (argus.ncl.ac.uk)
128.240.235.66 (jason.ncl.ac.uk)
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is an automatic way of supplying configuration to machines on the network. The IP address of the machine, the list of DNS servers and the address of the default routers are all automatically supplied using DHCP.
Dynamic address allocation has a great advantage over static allocation for administrative purposes. Network and IP addresses changes can be enacted centrally without any user intervention to ensure that all the machines receive the correct new addresses. Changes to network registrations can be made on the ISS Network Registration web site.
There are two mechanisms for synchronising time via the network. The rdate method sets the time of a client machine to be the same as a server. A more modern method for network time synchronisation is NTP, the Network time protocol which allows fine clock synchronisation of network connected hosts.
NTP has the advantage that machines synchronise between multiple servers, thus ensuring that all machines keep in step and one faulty server does not affect the others. This is an advantage over rdate, where one server with a faulty clock could supply the incorrect time to several clients.
Similar functionality to rdate (i.e. one shot time setting of client time) is provided by the ntpdate program for unix machines and the Apple Macintosh Network Time control panel.
The time servers at Newcastle are :
ntp0.ncl.ac.uk - NTP & rdate
ntp1.ncl.ac.uk - NTP
ntp2.ncl.ac.uk - NTP & rdate
ntp3.ncl.ac.uk - NTP
Everyone should now be using Exchange for their University mail either directly or using Outlook Web Access. In addition ISS continues to support the Post Office Protocol (POP) and the Interactive Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) for a limited number of services to receive mail. The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is also supported for sending mail.
The server smtpauth.ncl.ac.uk can also be used to send SMTP mail over a secure connection using SSL, you also need to authenticate to connect to the server successfully.