Technical Information
K-12 Domain Name Policy
EduTech (education technology services) and ITD will retain ownership and control of the k12.nd.us domain and the EduTech portion of the 165.234.x.x address space.
EduTech, in cooperation with the state's Information Technology Department (ITD), will provide two domain name servers for hosting of the k12.nd.us domain.
EduTech will support the use of vanity domains. Examples of this would be a school that wishes to register bulldogs.com or stantonhigh.com. In cooperation with ITD the vanity domain(s) will be hosted on ITD's domain name servers as CNAMES for the school's previously registered host within the k12.nd.us domain. This means that the school will have registered the host with ITD using a xxxx.yyyy.k12.nd.us domain name before going to a public internet domain register to apply for the vanity domain. When registering the vanity domain with an internet domain register the school will register itself as the Billing contact and ITD as the Technical contact along with the IP addresses of ITD's domain name servers. The school may list itself or ITD as the Administrative contact in the registry.
The school will need to contact EduTech to get the appropriate information before registering the vanity domain. It is the school's responsibility to handle the actual registration process and any costs incurred with the public internet domain register.
School's already owning vanity domains not hosted by ITD's domain name servers may leave them hosted by other ISP's until the current registration lapses. After the domain has been renewed we will require the school to move the domain to ITD's domain name servers.
Server and Workstation Naming Conventions
EduTech, in cooperation with ITD, will require that K-12 schools prefix their hostnames with ITD derived school prefixes listed at the end of this document. In other words the names will be of the form xxx-yyy.zzz.k12.nd.us where:
- xxx is the unique school number derived by ITD
- yyy is the machine name chosen by the school
- zzz is the district name as designated by ITD
An exception will be made for school's running Mac OS X workstations and servers. The naming convention here will be of the form yyy-xxx.zzz.k12.nd.us where:
- yyy is the machine name chosen by the school
- xxx is the unique school number derived by ITD
- zzz is the district name as designated by ITD
This method of assigning hostnames and domains should ensure there are no hostname conflicts within the K-12 network.
Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory Domains
EduTech and ITD will support the DNS portion of Windows 2000 domain controllers using Active Directory within the K-12 network but will require notification of this from the schools implementing it. The schools implementing Active Directory and deploying Windows 2000 servers and workstations (including Windows XP Professional workstations) will need to follow certain configuration requirements as described by EduTech in cooperation with ITD.
- First, navigate to Start Menu > Network and Dial Up Connections > Local Area Connection > Properties > TCP/IP > Advanced > DNS
- Uncheck the checkbox in front of "Append parent suffixes of the primary DNS suffix"
- Uncheck the checkbox in front of "Register this connection address in DNS"
- Click OK to confirm
Last updated on February 8, 2011