NAME SERVERS RETIREMENT

NOTE: Failure to read and follow these directions may result in interruption of network service for your devices!

As part of the university’s efforts to consolidate IT services to eliminate redundancy, Beckman Institute Information Technology Services (ITS) is planning to retire its two name servers. These servers provide name resolution services for the following:

• Domain Name System (DNS)
  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System )
• Windows Internet Name Service (WINS)
  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Internet_Name_Service )

The target date for all Beckman devices to use the CITES name servers is 5/31/2013. The servers will be turned off on 6/30/2013. This allows a month to find overlooked devices and to deal with any problems. To prevent problems with name resolution we urge you to make the necessary changes to your configurations as soon as you can, so as to not forget. ITS staff will help as necessary with making the change.

Instructions for what you need to do for each service are below. If you have questions regarding this change, please contact the ITS Help Desk at:
Room: 5345 BI
Phone: 244-2904
Email: helpdesk@beckman.illinois.edu

Why these changes are being made

These changes are being made as part of the university’s efforts to consolidate IT services to eliminate redundancy. CITES has improved its name server infrastructure to be highly-available and fault tolerant, and as such it can provide name resolution even if one or more servers fail or are unreachable. In light of this, it no longer makes sense for Beckman to maintain its own DNS and WINS servers. Further information on WINS and potential issues is below.

What you need to do

For each device that has a static IP address defined:
You will need to configure the WINS and DNS server entries in the network configuration of the device.

        Click here for instructions for DNS

        Click here for instructions for WINS

The final configuration should be as follows:

• Primary DNS server: 130.126.2.131
• Secondary DNS server: <blank>
• Primary WINS server: 128.174.5.30 or <blank>
• Secondary WINS server: 128.174.5.31 or <blank>

Since CITES has multiple DNS servers that use a single IP address, no secondary DNS server entry is needed.

For each device using dynamic host configuration (DHCP):
Note: Devices using DHCP will be automatically changed on May 15, 2013.
No action is necessary, unless you have set the DNS and/or WINS server addresses manually. The DHCP server will pass out the proper configuration information automatically. If you have configured the DNS and/or WINS server addresses manually then you will need to follow the instructions for a static IP address.

 

Further Information for WINS

WINS is a legacy name resolution system utilizing the outmoded NetBIOS name service, which was developed in the 1980’s for very small networks. The NetBIOS naming scheme allows only 15 characters for a computer name and there is no concept of a domain as part of the name. (e.g. A computer might be named “BI-COMPUTER” in WINS but named “bi-computer.beckman.illinois.edu” in DNS) This means that each computer name (also known as “short name”) must be unique among all computers using the same WINS service. On a campus of this size, the potential for name conflicts is enormous. With the introduction of Windows 2000, Microsoft began moving its services to use DNS instead of WINS. As long as there were services requiring WINS, then a WINS server was necessary. In 2012 there should be few remaining services requiring WINS so you may have no need to have a WINS server configured and can leave the entries blank, and we feel that except in rare circumstances there is no need for you to configure a WINS server on your computer.

There are two potential problems that can occur with WINS:

If you do not have a WINS entry in your network configuration: there is a small chance that you might not be able to see computers or file shares referenced with the NetBIOS name only, for example \\bi-computer. The best solution for this is to use the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), for example \\bi-computer.beckman.illinois.edu. If this is not practical then you should add the WINS entries in your network configuration.

If you do have a WINS entry in your network configuration: there is a small chance that your computer’s NetBIOS name will conflict with that of another computer on campus. If this occurs, the best solution for this is to remove your WINS entry from your network configuration, or to change your computer’s name to something more likely to be unique by either adding a prefix (preferred) or using a less common name. For example, “bi-faculty-lab” or “” are more likely to be unique than “frodo" or “lab”.