This document discusses the issues of first time registration and transfer of existing domain names to the jurisdiction of University of Glasgow and sets out University of Glasgow policy and procedures for those considering setting up a domain. It also covers the issues involved in hosting the service on University of Glasgow servers. Anyone considering establishing a web site is urged to plan carefully, allow plenty of time for initial discussions with appropriate staff in Computing Service, and sufficient time for the registration and delegation of the domain name to take place. Background Information servers connected to the Internet WWW use a hierarchical naming scheme. Where gla or glasgow identifies services within University of Glasgow, ac identifies services in the academic community and u k is the United Kingdom domain.
Different bodies have responsibilities for each of the domains or sub-domains.
Domain names are assigned to organisations as the registered holders or owners of a particular domain with a registered administrative or technical contact. The organisation may also be delegated as the nameserver for the domain name, although it is possible, but undesirable for this to done by an external agency. Domain names or web addresses serve three functions. They identify the resource to the user, the corporate identity of the service provider and they are used by the underlying computer hardware and network infrastructure to route the information from the server to the client. The choice of domain name should reflect the information resource that is to be made available, but may also be limited by availability, as a competitive and lucrative market has developed in the buying and selling of domain names.