IP Address/Hostname Allocation

• IP Addresses
• Hostnames
• Current host/IP list

In some cases you may be able to use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), which automatically selects an IP address for you each time you connect to the network. This is generally the simplest way to go, but there are a few of reasons you may not be able to use DHCP:

• Not all equipment supports DHCP, particularly older systems.
• If you want people to be able to connect to your system, you cannot use DHCP because you cannot be sure what your IP address will be.
• If you want to set up a specific host name for your machine, you cannot use DHCP because host names must be tied to specific addresses.

If you have new or relocated equipment that you want attached to the network, and DHCP is not appropriate for your situation (or if you're not sure if you should be using DHCP), please contact us so that we can assign an IP address for your equipment.

All Santa Clara University hostnames must be in the "domain" scu.edu, which means the full hostname must end with .scu.edu. The scu.edu domain is maintained by the Academic Computing Center.

In order to provide faster response and a greater sense of identity for the Engineering School and its departments, we have created a number of "subdomains" of scu.edu which are maintained by ECSS. The main Engineering domain is engr.scu.edu, and the departments are applmath.engr.scu.edu (Applied Mathematics), ce.scu.edu (Civil Engineering), cse.scu.edu (Computer Engineering), ee.scu.edu (Electrical Engineering), engrmgmt.scu.edu (Engineering Management), and me.scu.edu (Mechanical Engineering).

If you have network equipment that is not using DHCP (see above), we can set up a hostname for that equipment in your department's domain and/or the Engineering domain. We will generally set this up at the time your IP address is set.

Hostnames must start with a letter, and can contain letters, numbers, and hyphens. Hostnames must be unique within their domain, and for simplicity we would like to keep them unique across all of the engineering domains.

If you need a hostname for new equipment, or would like to change a current hostname, please contact us.

If you own an older Unix system, you may need to install this file as /etc/hosts on your workstation. If you have more than a few entries in the /etc/hosts file, you should periodically update your copy of /etc/hosts from this file. If you know you are running DNS, you do not need to do this.