DNSServers

Every computer connected to our network and the internet has an IP (internet protocol) address; on our network these look like 10.20.0.1.

These addresses are similar to your house's postcode in that it's the address where a computer can be found on a network (internet or the BristolWireless network). On their own they're a bit confusing. You wouldn't really know where, for example, BS5 6AG is.

A DNS (domain name system) server gives the computer's IP address a more easily remembered name, such as bristolwireless.net instead of 195.147.82.156.

We have a local DNS server running on 10.21.0.2; this should automatically be set on your computer when you connect to the BristolWireless network (no manual configuration needed). This allows you to use simple names instead of IP addresses for different services inside our network. We have set up an internal TLD (top level domain) which is .wlan (similar to the way .com or .co.uk works on the internet).

An example of our internal DNS services: The Chelsea pub in Easton has a BristolWireless IP address of 10.20.0.2, but has a simple name of chelseapub.wlan. Therefore if you wanted to see the website running from the Chelsea pub, you could simply type http://chelseapub.wlan into your browser.

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