Return to Other Technical Services

DNS

DNS overview

Typically if you are HFL Broadband school, we will manage the DNS for your .herts.sch.uk domain. If you are unsure, who manages your domain, there are lots of tools and websites you can browse to that will provide the information you require. If you wish to find out further information on a .herts.sch.uk domain for example, I’d suggest you browse here:

www.nominet.uk/whois

If you enter your domain and search on it, you should then be able to find out the following important information:

  • Who the registrant is, so who owns the domain – it will be you, the school
  • The registrar, who manages the DNS – for HFL Broadband schools, it should say RMPLC
  • The name servers who are authoritive for the domain – for HFL Broadband schools, it should provide RM’s DNS servers – ns0.ifl.net and ns1.ifl.net

HFL Broadband DNS enhancements

If schools wish to manage their own DNS records – rather than have us to do this for you, please get in touch. We can enable this and you will then be able to control this through your SafetyNet account.

The instructions to do this, can be found here: Self Service DNS in Herts.doc

Information we typically require to create or modify a DNS record

If you are changing your web host, email provider or require any DNS changes, please send the clear DNS instruction over to us and we can take it from there.

Requiring a new domain

Sometimes schools wish to change their existing .herts.sch.uk domain. It may be because their existing domain is too long or they are changing their school name. The .herts.sch.uk domain names are all managed by Nominet on behalf of the government and you will have to agree the new name with them. They like to deal with schools directly so it will be best if you do that bit yourself. They generally only allow schools one .herts.sch.uk domain name but they usually agree to an overlap of three months… three months from the date when the new one becomes active the old one will expire.  When agreeing the new domain name you also need to tell Nominet that you would like it to be TAGGED as “RMPLC”.  That just tells them that you wish RM to manage your DNS records, making them the registrar. I am not sure if Nominet make a charge for this but if they do it is just a few pounds.

Nominet contact details can be found here:

www.nominet.uk/contact-us

If you have queries relating to this, please get in touch and we will do all we can to help.