Changes to IP Addresses

What is happening? 

Over the coming months, Information Services (IS) will be upgrading the University network. Most staff and students will not be affected by the work, but those involved in more technical projects and roles may be impacted. You can read more specific details about the changes in the technical background notes below. 

When will this work start? 

Work on upgrading the network will happen over several stages before being completed by early 2025. The first stage of the project starts in September 2024. 

How will this affect me? 

Most staff and students will not be impacted and will not need to do anything. Any changes to the network will happen in the background and internet connectivity will not be affected. However, a small number of staff and students taking part in more technical projects may need to contact IS ahead of the changes being made to ensure that they do not experience any disruption. 

How can I tell if I might be affected? 

These changes will predominantly affect a small number of research staff and students working on technical projects. You should contact IS if any of the following applies to you: 

• You remotely access services at other organisations as part of a research project where the other party has asked for your IP address to provide you access to their services; 
  
• You are running servers that have hardcoded IP addresses in a certain range into their network configuration files;  
  
  
• You manage services which have access control lists containing IP addresses within a certain range- for example, if you run a server that has firewall rules in place to allow specific devices to connect. 

You can read further details in the technical background notes below. 

If you are not sure whether you will be affected or not, we recommend that you contact IS as early as possible so we can determine what, if any, alternative arrangements will need to be put in place. 

What will happen after I contact IS? 

Information Services staff will work on a case-by-case basis to minimise disruption to your services. 

Where can I find out when work is happening? 

The IS Service Status page will detail when work is happening, as well as other scheduled maintenance on IT systems. We recommend that you subscribe to updates when you visit the page. 

Technical Notes 

Aberystwyth University is assigning new IP addresses to devices within the IPv4 address range 144.124.0.0/16 and enabling IPv6 connectivity across its network. 

Detail for staff 

Examples of where the upgrade could potentially affect staff is where you are using a static outbound IPv4 address. For example, to remotely access services at other institutions where the external partner uses an IP allow list; servers and services run by research departments that currently rely on IP addresses in the 144.124.0.0/16 range; or services which have access control lists containing addresses in the 144.124.0.0/16 range. 

By default, devices on the University network will no longer have a publicly routable IPv4 address. These devices will now receive a dynamic internal IPv4 address as well as access to publicly routable IPv6 addresses. IPv4 connectivity will be provided from a Network Address Translation (NAT) address pool. IPv6 will not initially be available on the University's wireless network in all locations. However, this will not affect your ability to access the network over IPv4. For most staff, there will be no impact on their ability to connect to the internet. 

Detail for students 

The student network currently allocates all students a single, unique IPv4 address which all their devices use to access the internet. From the 2024/25 academic year, students will no longer be allocated their own IPv4 address and will be assigned a dynamic outbound address from either the 193.61.208.0/26 or 193.61.209.0/26 ranges. Multiple students will be sharing these addresses at any one time, and which address you use to access the internet may change at any time. Sharing addresses will have no effect on the privacy of users or security of devices. 

The student network will also become IPv6 enabled, using addresses in the 2001:630:2c3:d000::/53 and 2001:630:2c3:5800::/53 ranges, except for the Pentre Jane Morgan accommodation wireless network which is subject to a separate upgrade. 
For most students, there will be no impact on their ability to connect to the internet. Devices will automatically pick up the new network configuration and continue working.