Greeneville City Schools

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 7:46 pm 
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Joined: Mon May 16, 2005 10:13 am
Posts: 103
Location: Central Office
Before the Internet became so large there was no domain name system for giving network nodes their own addresses. Because there was no centralized system for this purpose, each network node contained its own “map” of the network nodes that it needed to know about, and assigned them names that were memorable to the user. There was no system for ensuring that all systems on a network were called the same thing.

The hosts file is used today mostly in a secondary or tertiary fashion to obtain names of networked computers. The domain name system provides nearly all Internet users with the names of the computers that they need to access (for example, http://www.google.com can be resolved on an Internet-connected computer without the need for its IP address to be listed in the hosts file).

The hosts file is still useful today in situations where the DNS (Domain Name Server) either cannot resolve the name of a node or is improperly configured (as in the case of Hughes Satellite Systems).

The hosts file for modern Windows computers is located at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc.

It is simply a text file containing the address and name of the server you want to reach.

Unfortunately, some Internet providers; notably Hughes Internet, do not seem to understand how to keep a DNS server running. Further, we were told by a senior engineer that they do not block DNS requests to DNS servers other than their own. Our own independent testing does not confirm this statement. Using DNS servers other than Hughes' did not work on a Hughes system.

We provide these instructions to help our customers.

Below is the contents of the default Windows hosts file:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost


To be able to reach a server that Hughes' DNS servers do not know about (which seems to be quite a few), you will simply add the IP address and the name of the server to this file. If you need to know the IP address. There are a number of tools on the Internet to do DNS lookups. None are perfect, and unfortunately; a number of them do not seem to work on Hughes networks. You should Google "dns lookups" without the quotes.

Below is a list of the Greeneville City Schools servers you might need to access and their corresponding public addresses.

    www.gcschools.net 96.4.198.130 # Our main address
    vpn.gcschools.net 96.4.198.130 # Applies to only a small number of our users
    mail.gcschools.net 96.4.198.131 # Send or receive email through our mail server
    igpro.gcschools.net 96.4.198.136 # Our grade server
    totaltrac.gcschools.net 96.4.198.140 # To report a problem with equipment
    analytics.gcschools.net 96.4.198.155 # Datawarehousing
    jobs.gcschools.net 96.4.198.161 # If you wish to use our career portal
    av.gcschools.net 96.4.198.165 # For AV updates on your tablet
    password.gcschools.net 96.4.198.170 # Our password self-service application

To enable your machine to reach our network from a Hughes connected computer do the following:

Press Start, then Run.
Type notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (you may copy and paste from this line)
Copy the list above and paste it below the last line of your hosts file. For most, it will be a line which ends localhost.

If you are printing this article at school for use at home you would:
Type notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Navigate to the bottom of the document. Pressing Ctrl and End simultaneously will move you to the bottom of the document.
You would then type each line. The normal format would be as follows:
www.gcschools.net <tab> 96.4.198.130 where <tab> means press the Tab key.

You do not have to type the "#" sign or anything following it. These are comments.

If you have questions or problems please feel free to contact us.

_________________
Larry Jones
Central Office


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