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Your Computer's Name:


Your computer is known to the public as:

Recently, computing services upgraded the DNS servers on campus to provide for dynamic host names. What does this mean? It means you can give your computer an easy-to-remember name for remote access via file sharing or other internet services. See below for more technical information.

This uses the "Computer Name" set in File Sharing on your computer to give your computer an internet domain name. Assuming your computer's name consists of letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores, it should now automatically register <name>.Kiewit.Dartmouth.EDU for the <name> of the computer. The name should also be updated automatically if and when the computer moves to a different building. (Per a Computing Services Bulletin). It appears that if you have a space in your computer's name, it can cause problems.

This has potential privacy issues - if your computer's name is or contains your name, as many computers are automatically set up to do, any web site or internet service you use can theoretically see your name. This page lets you check what your computer's name on the internet is.

Your computer is known to the public as: Note that if you have not restarted since Sunday afternoon, 4/21, you may need to restart to see what your computer's name really is.

To change this, you will need to change your computer's name in the File Sharing control panel. Then you should restart.

Changing your computer's name is easy [note, this is not the hard drive name].
For Macs, the name is the File Sharing name, set in the File Sharing or Sharing Setup control panel.
For Windows, the name is the network ID, located in either the "properties" window of "My Computer" (Win 2000, XP) under the Network Identification tab (click the Properties button) or in the Network control panel, under the "Identification" tab (Win 95/98).
It is a good idea to change the computer's file sharing or network ID name to one composed only of letters, digits, and hyphens ("Johns-G4"), then restart the computer. (Don't use underscores -- use a hyphen instead.)
(from a computing services blitzmail bulletin)

The Domain Name System is what translates internet domain names (ie www.dartmouth.edu ) to the actual addresses used by the internet to find computers. (IP numbers, which look like 129.170.16.79). It also lets you take an IP address and find what domain name it has. Most computers on the Dartmouth network use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) to find out their IP address. In the past, addresses received in this manner had a hostname similar to gold-coast93-dhcp-170.dartmouth.edu, which were not easily mapable to the user's name. This new system can result in hostnames similar to john_q_doe.kiewit.dartmouth.edu which can result in a privacy issue.

The Open Directory has a collection of links about the Domain Name System.


If you have problems or need assistance, please contact the Help Desk at 646-2999 (press 1)
You may contact the Student Assembly Web Team with additional questions.