skip to content

IT Help and Support

University Information Services
 

cam.ac.uk is the institutional domain for the University of Cambridge.  This page describes the policy that governs what email addresses may be provided for in this domain.

Personal addresses

All students and most staff have a personal email address following the format CRSid@cam.ac.uk (e.g. jsb97@cam.ac.uk) only. These are the email addresses that appear in the email and phone search. 'Friendly name' addresses are not available for the cam.ac.uk domain, but may be available within institutional domains, for example john.smith@st-botolphs.cam.ac.uk.

Role addresses

Role addresses are unavailable in the cam.ac.uk domain and instead should be attached to the institutional domain with which they are associated.

The only exceptions to these rules are:

  • those email addresses mandated by Internet Standards (RFCs);
  • address mandated by our ISP (JANET, the Joint Academic Network);
  • those the Information Service Committee has deemed essential to the business of the University;
  • short-lived exceptions, authorised for a limited time, at the Postmaster's discretion.

We publish a comprehensive list of defined role addresses in the @cam.ac.uk domain.

Subdomains

If multiple related addresses are required and no suitable subdomain exists, a new subdomain should be sought.

There are two ways of implementing the mail service for such a subdomain:

  • The institution (department, College or Faculty) may run their own mail server, supplying staff and possibly research students with mail boxes on an institutional server.
  • The institution (department, College or Faculty) may elect to have a 'managed mail domain'. A managed mail domain gives an institution some of the advantages of running their own mail server without the work of actually doing so. Further details of this may be found in the section on Managed Mail Domains.

If web pages associated with a role are hosted on an existing web server then the desired email address should be within that web server's domain. If an associated web page or website is required then a subdomain should be sought and the desired email addresses created within it.