Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

Network Addresses, Names and Name Service

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As a network user, you may have often heard mention of terminology such as “network addresses”, “hostnames”, “DNS”, “name-servers”, “registering” your computer, and the like. If you have wondered what all the fuss was about, read below for some answers to your questions.

What is an Internet Name/Address?

Every computer connected to the network has a numeric “address” associated with it, based on its physical location. This number, also known as an “Internet Protocol (IP) address”, is used by network software to route data to the proper destination. Each computer also has a “hostname” associated with it, usually something that is meaningful to humans and indicative of the computer’s organizational relationship within the network.

For example, NACS’ orion UNIX service has a network number of 128.200.80.20, indicating it is located at UCI (128.200) and in Engineering Gateway (subnet 80). The official name of the system is “orion.nacs.uci.edu”, indicating it is associated with the NACS part of UCI. The computer could be moved to a different building with the same name, only the network address would change.

What is the Internet Domain Name Service?

The “Domain Name System” (DNS) is a world-wide distributed database system that maintains network name and address information for every computer connected to the Internet. It is among the most critical components of the network, as virtually nothing works without it. You may not realize it but you are using DNS every time you send an electronic mail message or click on a link in a web page.

How does the Domain Name Service work?

There are thousands of DNS “name-servers” around the world, each one responsible for a portion of the entire Internet “name space”. NACS is responsible for UCI’s portion of the name space, which is known as the “UCI.EDU domain”. In addition to UCI.EDU which provides network address lookups based on hostnames, UCI also manages the “reverse lookup” domain which allows a hostname to be determined from its network address.

When your network software needs to access another system, it first contacts its local name-server. If the desired system is a local UCI host, the name-server supplies the network address directly. If the host is off campus, the name-server contacts the appropriate name-servers in series to determine the network address.

Why register your computer?

It is important that your computer’s name and address be registered in DNS for several reasons. First, it will ensure that you are assigned a unique IP address. Many computer users have encountered problems due to someone else’s computer using their IP address.

Secondly, many information and service providers have restricted their host access to computers which are registered in DNS. There are unscrupulous people who use anonymous, non-registered IP addresses to “attack” hosts and cause various electronic mischief. Lastly, knowing the departmental ownership of systems allows NACS to collect overall statistics concerning network traffic, which is critical for network maintenance and planning.

How can I make sure my host is registered?

If you use NACS computer systems (EA, E4E, Orion, etc.) and are not receiving an error message about your host needing to be registered, your computer is registered. You may also check with your local computing support coordinator, who is likely in charge of registering hosts for your department. If you have further questions, drop NACS a note via our NACS@UCI.EDU e-mail address.

Reviewing Academic Computing Support

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The UCI Academic Computing Support Review Committee has been formed to collect information andperspectives concerning support of academic computing at UCI. The committee will look at both local(departmental and school) and central support of faculty, student, and academic department computingactivities. It will also make initial recommendations on improving UCI’s support situation.

The creation of the committee represents a first step in reviewing the critical issue of technical support atUCI. The information gathered, as well as the initial recommendations made, will be available for campus comment and follow-up study.

“Computing support” includes end-user (faculty, student, staff) assistance, as well as behind-the-scenes network, server and application maintenance and development. Examples of end-user assistance are: system and software installation/setup, hardware/ software problem resolution, “how-to” advice on common software, instructional computing assistance, and consulting on a variety of topics.

The committee membership is a mix of faculty, assistant deans, and computer support managers. Members are: Peter Breen (College of Medicine), Candy Garretson (Humanities), Gregg Goldman (Graduate School of Management), Craig Martens (Physical Sciences), Jim Murry (College of Medicine), Leslie Pearlman (Biological Sciences), Thomas Saine (Humanities), Alan Terricciano (School of the Arts), Jan Vescera (NACS), and Ted Wright (Research and Graduate Studies/ Social Sciences). Input to the committee may be provided to any of its members, or to Committee Chair Dana Roode (DRoode@UCI.EDU, 824-5173).

Microsoft Office 97

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If you are considering the move to Microsoft’s Office 97 suite of products, there are some features that you should be aware of.

Some Good News:

Office 97 makes Web publishing easier. All Office applications can generate HTML files, and allow you to directly “save” to your Web site via FTP. Microsoft Word 97 can also read HTML files and serve as an HTML editor.

Word 97 can disable autoexecute macros, which is an effective safeguard against Word macro viruses like “Concept”, one of the most prevalent viruses on campus.

Some Cautions:

The Office 97 products save in a different format than their 95 counterparts. To go back to an older version of the software, you must do a “Save As” and select the right format. There is NO GOING BACK with Microsoft Access. Once you convert a database to Access 97 you cannot return to Access 95 at all.

There is a filter to allow Word 97 documents to be read by PC users with Word 95 or 6.0. There is a similar filter for Macintosh Word users with versions 5.1 or 6.0. Both of these filters are available on Microsoft’s web site, and also on the UCI Mac and PC archives:

http://mac-archive.oac.uci.edu/ -or- http://pc-archive.oac.uci.edu/

There have been many bugs in Office 97; Microsoft has released over 8 Mb of patches in a file called “Service Release 1” (SR-1). We recommend that all Office 97 users download and install these patches. For more information, contact your local computing supporter, see the UCI PC archive, or Microsoft’s Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/Office/Office97/ServiceRelease/

More information about Microsoft Office can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/Office/ –and– http://www.microsoft.com/OfficeFreeStuff/

NACS After-Hours Policy

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Although many NACS services and facilities are available 24 hours a day, NACS technical assistance and consulting support is only available during the standard UCI business hours of 8 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. Only the on-duty NACS computer operator is available outside those hours.

During evening and weekend/holiday “waking” hours, technical staff in a few key areas are on-call to handle urgent problems such as central service failures and other major outages. Technical resources available after-hours are minimal — problems will take longer to resolve and some may ultimately have to wait until the next business day. All urgent off-hour problems should be reported via the on-duty computer operator at (949)824-6065; e-mail reporting addresses and staff phones are not covered during this time. (The NACS network trouble reporting line, (949) 824-2222, is also answered by the computer operator after hours).

In most cases, problems occurring during “non-waking” hours that the operator cannot resolve will be reported to on-call staff early the next morning. Exceptions to this include widespread outages, and threats to University resources.

We appreciate client feedback to our after-hours policy. We believe the policy strikes a reasonable balance between timely handling of problems that impact University business and the substantial cost of after-hours support.

Access to UCI-Only Web Sites From Commercial ISPs

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Note: The Web Proxy Gateway was replaced with the WebVPN. 

NACS is pleased to announce the UCI Web Proxy Gateway. The Gateway allows UCI faculty, students and staff with active UCInetIDs to access UCI-restricted Internet WWW resources from non-UCI network locations. This means UCI community members who use commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Pacific Bell Internet or America OnLine (AOL) can now access key Web resources from off-campus.

In partnership with NACS, the UCI Libraries are providing UCI Web Proxy Gateway access from the UCI Libraries Homepage to key, previously restricted, research resources. These include: MELVYL‘s Medline, Current Contents, and INSPEC databases;Britannica Online; as well as many electronic, full-text journals available from publishers such as Johns Hopkins’ Project Museand the Institute of Physics. Additional resources will be added as they are acquired by the Libraries.

The UCI Libraries Homepage, including the complete list of electronic resources currently available, may be found at:http://www.lib.uci.edu/ The UCI Web Proxy Gateway, including detailed documentation, may be found at: http://gateway.uci.edu/

Please send questions and comments about the gateway to NACS@UCI.EDU.

Questions about Library resources may be sent to LIBRARIES@UCI.EDU.