1 Overview

The purpose of this policy is to describe the distribution and designation of IP addresses and hostnames on the University of Bath's network maintained by the Digital, Data & Technology Group.

The Policy is maintained and regulated by DD&T and is cross-referenced to, and by, a number of other University policies and regulations.

The Policy will be made available to users of the network and related services and facilities. There will also be periodic review of the Policy and, if necessary, amended from time to time. This will be necessary with regard to the expected developments of the system, the operational use of the system and generally recognised best practice.

The network is provided by the University to support its primary role of education and research and associated functions related to this role.

2 Statement of authority and scope

This policy is intended to detail the rules for the use and designation of IP addresses and hostnames for all members (generally staff and students) of the University of Bath who use the University Network and related services. This policy applies to all hosts connecting to the network either physically or virtually. The Policy is applicable to all members of the University including staff, students and other authorised users of University IT facilities.

The University complies with and adheres to all its current legal responsibilities including Data Protection, Electronic Communication, Human Rights, Computer Misuse, Copyright and Intellectual Property.

3 Statement of responsibilities

Individual users are responsible for their own actions. The use of the network by individuals at Bath assumes and implies compliance with these policies without exception. Every maintainer of hosts on the network has a duty to ensure they practise appropriate and proper use and must understand their responsibilities in this regard.

Senior management of DD&T will be responsible for ensuring heads of Faculties, Departments, Schools, Centres and Units are aware of this policy; they, in turn, will be responsible for informing their people of this policy.

DD&T are responsible for publishing and maintaining all the relevant IP and hostname data through a hosts file and DNS. DD&T will maintain a contact address lanmaster@bath.ac.uk through which queries about the data and other issues relating to the network should be made.

DD&T are responsible for IP policy as a whole. Certain areas of IP allocation and naming will be delegated to named local supporters. This will be with the full cooperation and support of DD&T. A list of the relevant delegated members will be published with the central data.

4 IP/hostname registration

Only authorised users of the University computer systems are entitled to use bath hostnames and IP addresses on the network. All hosts connected to the network must have a registered IP address and hostname. Hosts that are not registered will be given 24 hours to register after which their LAN access will be terminated. Registration of hosts is through lanmaster@bath.ac.uk

The technical background to IP-address allocation and hostname conventions is provided for information.

5 Statement of delegation of IP registration authority to named supporters

DD&T will maintain a list of delegated IP ranges and hostname prefixes. A link between each range and its recognised IT supporters will be made. For a delegated range, instructions to add or modify the hosts/DNS database will only be accepted from those recognised support groups associated with the range in question. Any other requests received by DD&T, for which a support group is defined, will be forwarded to the respective IT support group for their attention.

6 Hostname conventions

All hosts should have a unique name that is registered in the hosts DNS; the unique name will be registered so that reverse lookups are self consistent. For efficiency and fairness naming has been codified. In general, for end hosts, these take the form dcgi-name where "dc"is a 2-character department code,"gi" is a generic identifier and "-name" is a string which ensures uniqueness and does not violate RFC 1034, 1035 or superseding RFC's. The "-name" should not make reference to the hosts operating system. DD&T reserve the right not to implement a proposed hostname if it is considered to be inappropriate.

Department codes are detailed in the Your username document.

Generic identifiers follow:

• PC: pc
• Apple/Mac: mc- supersedes mac
• Printer: pr
• Servers: sv
• Workstations: hp or sg or sun etc supersede previous individual naming.
  

Superseding conventions will not be applied retrospectively. Additional address records or aliases may be considered for servers, this is designed to allow continuation of services eg Department file/web server.

7 Document Control Information

Version Number: 0.04
Approval Date: November 2004