Accessibility statement

Domain Name System (DNS)

Related pages

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a naming system for computers, servers and other resources.

It translates domain names, which can be easily memorised by humans, to the numerical IP addresses to be used by computers.

This service is fundamental to the operation of all our IT systems.

Overview

Eligibility

All users of the Campus Network will use the DNS lookup service with their connected equipment.

Staff may request external domain name registration and/or DNS hosting via your Departmental Computing Officer.

Our DNS service provides mappings for names in or below the york.ac.uk domain, and services to look up names from other sites around the world.

The DNS is compatible with virtually all computers and equipment capable of connecting to a network.

Details of configuring equipment connected to the University network are supplied automatically as part of their connection/registration.

Registering external domain names (.ac.uk)

By special arrangement, we can arrange registration of, and DNS hosting for, domain names within .ac.uk

Registering external (non-york.ac.uk) domain names may incur charges from the relevant registration service, for which the customer will be responsible.

To discuss registering an external domain name or DNS hosting, please contact the Library & IT Help Desk.

Help & troubleshooting

Library & IT Help Desk

If you have any questions about DNS, please get in touch with the IT Support.

Our commitments

Service status Live and supported service.
Hours of service 24/7
Service support For help and support with this service, contact the IT Support.
Hours of support Help from the Library & IT Help Desk is available 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Target availability

General IT Services targets:

  • Information Services Service Standards
Resilience The DNS is a critical service, needed for virtually all IT and network-connected equipment to function correctly. It is therefore set up to be highly resilient:
  • Two separate clusters of servers run the DNS service: one cluster handles requests from equipment connected to the Campus Network, the other deals with requests arriving from the outside world.
  • Each cluster contains multiple servers hosted in separate locations.
  • Any one server from a cluster is able to handle that cluster's workload.
Our performance

Our service standards have been produced in consultation with our customers, and monitor the quality, timeliness and access to facilities and services:

  • Information Services Service Standards

Complaints procedure

If you wish to give us general feedback on this service, please see our Feedback page for ways to get in touch.

If you wish to make a complaint, please see our complaints procedure.

Your responsibilities

If requesting a custom domain, we expect you to:

  • provide us with information we may request
  • pay any third-party fees
  • to inform us of any changes to the contact details of the person responsible for the domain