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Hello from the NAS!

This month, we have information about campus DNS, a new and improved DNS registration web page, configuring Eudora for maximum performance, and information on how to get Onnet 2.1 or Onnet 32 on CD.

As always, please send commments or questions to NAS-L@listserv.uiuc.edu.

Thanks!


We're never idle in CCSO. To address a number of people's concerns about security with the DNS registration page, we've upgraded it so that it now requires a person to enter their Network ID and password. This ensures a reasonable degree of authentication. Due to the sensitivity of Network IDs and passwords, the CGI registration page is now running on a Netscape Secure Server, so you won't be transmitting your password in the clear. The new url is: https://www-s1.cso.uiuc.edu/nas/hostreg/hostreg.cgi

The old url will redirect you to the new DNS page. That old URL is http://tampico.cso.uiuc.edu/hostreg


Recently, while trying to tune performance on UX1, CCSO noticed that UX1 is still servicing a large number of DNS requests. For those of you who are interested, the top 8 hosts that use UX1 for DNS are asking it for about 10,000 hostnames a day!

Since this does cause a noticable drain on UX1's speed, we just thought we'd mention that the campus DNS servers are 128.174.5.58, 128.174.36.254, and 129.79.1.9.


Many people are experiencing problems with Eudora timing out. We find that in most cases, this is because a user's Eudora configuration uses "mailhost.cso.uiuc.edu" or "postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu" as their SMTP server. We strongly recommend (and fervently request) that you do not use either of these machines for your SMTP forwarding host. Mailhost.cso.uiuc.edu (which points to the same host as postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu) is the machine that services all @uiuc.edu mail. It also is the main forwarding point for mail on it's way into and out of the campus. Most importantly, the machine is extremely heavily loaded, and the extra load imposed by individuals configuring Eudora to forward mail to this host is more than it can handle.

Instead, we recommend that you set the SMTP host to be the same as the host from which a user downloads their mail. This means that the load imposed by sending mail is balanced along with the user account distribution, meaning that you will get much better performance.


Anup Roy, of CCSO, wants to find out how many people would be interested in being able to purchase from Account Services a CD-ROM copy of the OnNet32 2.0 (when it arrives) and OnNet 2.1 software. He also wants to know how many people want printed documentation. If you would be interested in the CD-ROM or documentation, please send mail to anuproy@uiuc.edu


Thanks, and we hope you found this information useful!

CCSO NAS