New Domain Name

Manchester Community College has a new domain name, manchestercc.edu. This new name provides the college with a more distinctive web identity and is much easier to communicate than mcc.commnet.edu (particularly over the telephone.) You might wonder what this change means for you and how it will affect your existing links and addresses. The short answer to this is that all of your existing links and mail addresses will continue to work just as they always have. You do not need to make any changes to use the new domain but can just start using it interchangeably with the existing domain. For example, you could paste manchestercc.edu directly into the address bar of your web browser and the college's home page will be resolved. As an example of this new domain use, if your existing email address was ksugar@mcc.commnet.edu you could advertise your address as ksugar@manchestercc.edu and both addresses will work. As the college transitions to our new domain here are some simple ways you can help with the effort. Edit your Exchange email signature file so that it reflects the new domain name in both the web address and your email address. Before ordering new printed items such as business cards and stationery, insure that the new domain has replaced the mcc.commnet.edu domain. When providing either email or web address information over the phone use the new domain name. You will find it is much easier to say manchestercc.edu than having to spell out mcc.com as in Mike, m as in Mike, n as in Nancy, et.edu.

 

For those of you who might wish to know a bit more about how this works, here is some additional information. Email and webpages are located and directed to you using the Domain Name System. This is commonly referred to as DNS. DNS is the system that enables the resolution of names to work across the Internet. Every website has at least one registered domain name. The domain name points to the website and domain name system servers across the Internet cooperate to keep track of all the names and help each other to find what you are looking for, whether it is a website or email recipient. A DNS server holds a large database containing domain names and corresponding IP addresses. For example, if the domain name "google.com" resolves to the website at 64.233.167.99 the DNS server holds this information. There are many thousands of DNS servers worldwide located on campuses and with hosting companies and other organizations. The DNS servers cooperate by synchronizing with each other and addresses get propagated across the Internet. The addresses are help in various types of records on these DNS servers. The record that points to manchestercc.edu is called an A record and it knows that the phrase manchestercc.edu translates to the IP address of 155.43.61.93. There is another A record on the DNS server for mcc.commnet.edu that also points to the same IP address. For email, MX records perform a similar function and again we have two MX records that both point to the proper path.

 

For a browser to find a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) also known as a web address it performs certain steps behind the scenes in order to translate the domain name into the IP address of a website. First your browser will check its local memory (this is also called the cache) to see if it already has the address registered. If yes then it will resolve the name and display the page. If it doesn't know it will check a hosts file and then the default DNS server and so on out to other DNS servers in the world until it can resolve the name correctly. If the browser can't find a DNS entry anywhere, it won't be able to resolve the domain name. When this happens your browser will show an error page. For more information, or if you have any questions, contact Barry Grant.