Domain Naming ad.school.co.uk

[thegrassisgreener]

Hi all,

does anyone have any info on Naming a domain. This is hard to explain.
What I mean is for example would you name a school domian the following

ad.school.co.uk

or just school.co.uk

and netbios

SCHOOL?

What i'm really asking is there a "best practice" way this should be done?

thanks

[elsiegee40]

I try NOT to use .co.uk for the domain name. I find it less confusing to use .local - anything that's not a valid www suffix!

[thegrassisgreener]

I mean more for the ad. not the .co.uk

I know someone who was Criticized for putting ad. before his domain.

I was just wondering why it would have been Criticized

[Oops_my_bad]

keep it simple - i think MS best practice is <domain>.<local>

Here our AD domain is the same as our web domain. No problems doing that as long as you don't get your zones mixed up.

[Geoff]

We use our assigned name. That way internal/external dns looks the same. Plus I get to keep my sanity.

eg, internally our vle server is called 'vle'. Thus with our domain name as carrhill.lancs.sch.uk it get turns into vle.carrhill.lancs.sch.uk. You'll notice, if you shove that address in your web browser, it works externally too.

IIRC using .local (even though the MS docs recommend it) causes problems with Macs and Bonjour. So avoid!

[GrumbleDook]

MS Best practice is not <domain>.local ... it is just that they include it in all their documentation, in their training materials and bloody everywhere.

.local is allocated to zeroconf setups, which is why schools had lots of problems with Macs from Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.3.

Best practice is to use a domain suffix that will not be registered through any ICANN registered process and to only use domains that you legally have access to. For schools this is recommended to be <school>.<area>.sch.uk, giving a full domain of <school>.<area>.sch.uk giving a netbios name of <school>

For those not using their .sch.uk domain then school.org.uk is best ...

I honestly can't see any reason to have ad.school.org.uk as this makes it look like a child domain (and can make things horrible when you start playing with alternative netbios names)

If I didn't know you better I would say you are trying to design a system to confuse staff.

[Dos_Box]

Or SCHOOL.AC.UK

[Oops_my_bad]

If I didn't know you better I would say you are trying to design a system to confuse staff.

Yeh sure, 'cos that would make the OP's job SOOOOOOOOO much easier

[localzuk]

our domain is sch4290.somerset.gov.uk - it is a legit internet address but isn't externally available. Adding an ad to the front would just confuse matters as it would be a child-domain of a child-domain of a domain.

[GrumbleDook]

our domain is sch4290.somerset.gov.uk - it is a legit internet address but isn't externally available. Adding an ad to the front would just confuse matters as it would be a child-domain of a child-domain of a domain.

Ye gods ... that is horrible. Centrally managed AD by any chance?

[sidewinder]

My school was .local when I got here and never had any problems so not planning to change anytime soon! I suppose we should use our assigned domain but our website is hosted by the LEA so we have no control over that domain, and our sch.uk one redirects to some secondary schools online site so dunno if we have control over that or not

Actually after saying no problems with .local....theres one slight one in that the Macs get a bit confused because the server is called xxxx.local and it seems to bring up our domain.local sometimes instead..might just have been the way it was set up before I got here though

[localzuk]

Ye gods ... that is horrible. Centrally managed AD by any chance?

No, it is a standard setup across Somerset - all schools down here are supposed to be schXXX.somerset.gov.uk internally. It is just how the LEA wants us to be.

It is, luckily, not a centrally managed domain though!

It may help in the future with our LEA's plans to set up some form of SSO service. But I don't really know.

[sahmeepee]

Steering clear of .local is definitely wise if you're starting from scratch. There were some posts on uk.education.schools-it about it a few ice ages ago. Our LEA uses a domain hierarchy the same as our external .sch.uk one, but with .sch.int instead. Let's hope .int doesn't get allocated for "international"!

[GrumbleDook]

Steering clear of .local is definitely wise if you're starting from scratch. There were some posts on uk.education.schools-it about it a few ice ages ago. Our LEA uses a domain hierarchy the same as our external .sch.uk one, but with .sch.int instead. Let's hope .int doesn't get allocated for "international"!

Erm ... the stuff on uk.education.schools-it was me and Rob Moir chatting about it.

Oh $deity ... necro from another group is taking it a bit far.