Core services are services needed to get computers setup and configured to work on the campus network. These services should be applied automatically but are listed here for those devices that can only be manually configured.

Dynamic Address Allocation (DHCP)

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is an automatic way of supplying configuration to machines on the network. DHCP is used with all network connection methods to provide the IP address of the machine, the list of DNS servers and the address of the default router.

Dynamic address allocation is 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. 

Machines should be configured to "Obtain an IP address automatically" which is the default setting for all platforms.

Domain Name Service (DNS)

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 but you can also use newcastle.ac.uk

The DNS servers available to users on campus are:

• 10.8.232.109 (dns4.ncl.ac.uk)
• 10.8.232.199 (dns5.ncl.ac.uk)

For users off campus you can use:

• 128.240.229.18 (dns1.ncl.ac.uk)
• 128.240.229.34 (dns2.ncl.ac.uk)

Network Time Servers

We provide NTP servers as a reliable time source for campus machines. NTP is more reliable than other time protocols since it uses several different servers so a single faulty server can be identified and excluded.

The time servers at Newcastle are :

• ntp0.ncl.ac.uk
• ntp1.ncl.ac.uk
• ntp2.ncl.ac.uk
• ntp3.ncl.ac.uk