Infrastructure - https://qub.ac.uk BeaverCheck Audit

D

CDN & Delivery

Action

No CDN detected

FIX

No CDN detected

A CDN can significantly improve load times for users around the world by caching content at edge nodes closer to them.

No CDN detected

Consider using a CDN to improve global delivery speed and reduce origin load.

B

Redirect Chain

1 redirect(s), 1751 ms total

REVIEW

1 redirect(s), 1751 ms total

Single redirect

Got: https://qub.ac.uk → https://www.qub.ac.uk/ (301)

WWW normalization redirect

Redirect overhead: 1751 ms total

Got: 1751 ms

https://qub.ac.uk

846 ms · HTTP/1.1

301

https://www.qub.ac.uk/

905 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#	URL	Status	Time	Protocol	Server
1	https://qub.ac.uk	301	846 ms	HTTP/1.1	Apache
2	https://www.qub.ac.uk/	200	905 ms	HTTP/1.1	Apache

See the visual redirect chain in the HTTP Probe tab →

C

IPv6 Readiness

Action

No IPv6 support

REVIEW

No IPv6 support

No IPv6 (AAAA) records found

IPv6 support is increasingly important for global accessibility. About 40% of internet users have IPv6 connectivity.

No IPv6 Support

About 40% of internet users have IPv6. Consider adding AAAA records.

IPv6 support is increasingly important for global accessibility. About 40% of internet users have IPv6 connectivity.

Why this matters

No AAAA records — same impact as 'no IPv6 (AAAA) records'; IPv6-preferring clients pay extra latency falling back to IPv4.

Source: Google IPv6 stats

B

URL Variants

www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS

REVIEW

www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS

Both www and non-www versions serve content

Got: Both variants return 200 Expected: One variant 301-redirects to the other

HTTP correctly 301-redirects to HTTPS

www / non-www

200https://www.qub.ac.uk/

200https://qub.ac.uk/

Inconsistent — duplicate content risk

HTTP → HTTPS

301http://qub.ac.uk/ → https://www.qub.ac.uk/

Consistent

B

HTTP Probe Timing

Total 862 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown

REVIEW

DNS Lookup

186 ms

TCP Connect

167 ms

TLS Handshake

341 ms

Time to First Byte

862 ms

Total Time

862 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 186 ms TCP Connect 167 ms TLS Handshake 341 ms Server Processing 168 ms Content Transfer 0 ms

B

TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations

186 days until leaf cert expires — 4 issues to address

REVIEW

Certificate validity

186

days left

0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

Prefer TLS 1.3 — TLS 1.2 is acceptable but TLS 1.3 removes RSA key exchange and improves latency
Enable HSTS: Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
Enable DNSSEC on your domain for DNS spoofing protection
Enable OCSP stapling on your TLS server to remove a CA roundtrip and protect user privacy

A

DNS Records

1 A records, 1035 ms lookup

PASS

1 A records, 1035 ms lookup

Resolves to 1 IPv4 address(es)

Got: 143.117.1.58

Single A record — no DNS redundancy

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

No IPv6 (AAAA) records

3 nameserver(s) configured

Got: ns4.ja.net, juno.qub.ac.uk, luna.qub.ac.uk

1 mail exchanger(s) configured

CAA records not checked

CAA record lookup requires a specialized DNS resolver. This check will be available in a future update.

SPF record present in TXT

DNS resolution is slow (1035 ms)

Slow DNS adds latency to every page load. Consider a faster DNS provider.

Got: 1035 ms

A	143.117.1.58
AAAA	—
CNAME	—
NS	ns4.ja.net, juno.qub.ac.uk, luna.qub.ac.uk
MX	0 qub-ac-uk.mail.protection.outlook.com
TXT	MS=ms85205230 QuoVadis=60bd3a99-66a8-4bd1-9444-012a51f79f66 apple-domain-verification=c5FwDi7yPFG3BTlU google-site-verification=r2DY335aYhcLzBohy6z7q5o0MWP961-4mD5F4Jd9u3k google-site-verification=Lr_nvoJyqai2cg0I5eRnQHQut3zWvsuvu2SSS31GHWI miro-verification=2b6bff9a0a2cee6204ed576177a8c4632dc26fee jamf-site-verification=fQCLapBqmEk7QOpKkxBlqw bw=FzUQmHweK53ElC4E3aojUXQ2khrhvg4Ih2PwUknSjWzC _ufwarqdfs6zxff46zzmzv18q7mdfmz9 bw=143Z1DBAIW1ozcJ82fUHHYnyVS69OxnGM5Z8iBiUNA8Z google-gws-recovery-domain-verification=65447286 google-gws-recovery-domain-verification=65573076 google-gws-recovery-domain-verification=65339499 google-site-verification=WtaKFPE7IrbDDgw97d2lsNxa26FHlmtt8ycBsdX162w google-site-verification=tEnrZVGaJ8kjE0_bHXLka-NWDyT8tF96aLbBN_sZ0ME _ragmw34hdrhu1ctqm3rbn0en73opaho d365mktkey=KG0WNPBxmEZB7xlnGuTdinpOjZBDpsLfIjyl3pQhUswx d365mktkey=XBTFfxwsFlwrTxPx8Wp8rMBOe9eSFrxUlcFIeqZJkIsx SPF v=spf1 include:_u.qub.ac.uk._spf.smart.ondmarc.com ~all B970560B-0E90-40B2-B577-82F5FA5ABB19 rYpxaMyAi1vzURswGMbOoeNB35VgUFcV1xzZWjPGjvP/M8DRhby4w1jsyFAuCbd+aBTuBiawuK36zG6j... fSU5uuFelXPzoOijdqwziEhcmAwHMgLARPC3QjQoCP0GIhDOI8GQf+n3F263K/yDzryIjYhfyUtHnHaz...
CAA	Lookup not available with standard resolver

Resolved in 1035 ms

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

Why this matters

Single A record means a single point of failure — if that IP goes down, your site is unreachable until DNS TTL expires.

Learn more ▾

Add multiple A records for round-robin failover, or use a managed DNS provider with health-checked failover (Route 53, Cloudflare, NS1). Short TTL (60-300s) lets clients recover faster on outages.

Source: SRE practice / DNS architecture

CAA record lookup requires a specialized DNS resolver. This check will be available in a future update.

Why this matters

Informational: CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) records weren't checked in this scan.

Slow DNS adds latency to every page load. Consider a faster DNS provider.

Why this matters

DNS resolution is slow — anycast DNS providers (Cloudflare, Route 53) typically resolve <50ms globally.

Source: DNS performance benchmarks

A+

Crawlability

robots.txt present, sitemap with 1629 URLs

PASS

robots.txt present, sitemap with 1629 URLs

robots.txt is present

Got: 3725 bytes

sitemap.xml is present

sitemap.xml is valid XML

sitemap.xml contains 1629 entries

robots.txt references sitemap

robots.txt 200 OK

Size 3725 B Sitemaps referenced 5 User-agents *, 008 Blocking No — crawling allowed

Sitemap: http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/sitemap/index.xml

Sitemap: http://www.qub.ac.uk/home/sitemap/index.xml

Sitemap: http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/sitemap/index.xml

Sitemap: http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/sitemap/index.xml

Sitemap: http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/sitemap/index.xml



User-agent: *

Disallow: /qub_only/

Disallow: /EWS/

Disallow: /schools/psy/Bulletin/

Disallow: /po/qubonly/

Disallow: /mgt/local/

Disallow: /www/htdocs/home/media/Media,432457,en.php

Disallow: /icpeac2011/photos/

Disallow: /lib/qubonly/

Disallow: /mpeng/mmeng/ug/

Disallow: /mpeng/mmeng/private/

Disallow: /tbe/arc/local/

Disallow: /bs/qubonly/

Disallow: /info/qub_only/

Disallow: /info/update/senate/

Disallow: /music/tomita/

Disallow: /music/~tomita/

Disallow: /music/cgi-bin/

Disallow: /music-cgi/

Disallow: /stats/

Disallow: /site/

Disallow: /qol/InformationAbout/Research/

Disallow: /gavinm-bin/

Disallow: /gavinm/

Disallow: /ceipe/SALPI/

Disallow: /ceipe/medgov/

Disallow: /menu_items/

Disallow: /TheUniversity/GeneralServices/TheStaffHandbook

Disallow: /edu-old/

Disallow: /fem-old-test/

Disallow: /gec2004/

Disallow: /old-site/

Disallow: /sites/icpig2011/

Disallow: /sites/icpig2011/

Disallow: /contacts/

Disallow: /imagebank/

Disallow: /home/media/Media,432457,en.php

Disallow: /media/Media,432457,en.php

Disallow: /home/events/WhatsOn/

Disallow: /events/WhatsOn/

Disallow: /home/TheUniversity/GeneralServices/TheStaffHandbook

Disallow: /home/Study/Course-Finder/UG/2016/

Disallow: /home/Study/Course-Finder/MediaHub/

Disallow: /home/Study/Course-Finder/UG/

Disallow: /home/Study/Course-Finder/PCF1617/

Disallow: /home/Study/Course-Finder/PCF1718/

Disallow: /home/courses/undergraduate/2018/

Disallow: /home/Connect/News/search/

Disallow: /home/News/search/

Disallow: /home/courses/compare/

Disallow: /home/courses/*keyword=*

Disallow: /home/courses/*courseSubject=*

Disallow: /home/courses/*courseType=*

Disallow: /home/courses/*courseDuration=*

Disallow: /home/courses/*School=*

Disallow: /TheUniversity/GeneralServices/TheStaffHandbook

Disallow: /Study/Course-Finder/UG/2016/

Disallow: /Study/Course-Finder/MediaHub/

Disallow: /Study/Course-Finder/UG/

Disallow: /Study/Course-Finder/PCF1617/

Disallow: /Study/Course-Finder/PCF1718/

Disallow: /courses/undergraduate/2018/

Disallow: /Connect/News/search/

Disallow: /News/search/

Disallow: /courses/compare/

Disallow: /courses/*keyword=*

Disallow: /courses/*courseSubject=*

Disallow: /courses/*courseType=*

Disallow: /courses/*courseDuration=*

Disallow: /courses/*School=*

Disallow: */search/*

Disallow: /cdda/@LivingLegacies1914-18_v2/

Disallow: /sites/StaffGateway/RoundUpArchive/

Disallow: /ilhairelaughter/

Disallow: /slavery/

Disallow: /mailtools/email4life/

Disallow: /home/courses/postgraduate-taught/2018/

Disallow: /courses/postgraduate-taught/2018/

Disallow: /home/courses/postgraduate-research/2018/

Disallow: /courses/postgraduate-research/2018/

Disallow: /courses/undergraduate/2019/

Disallow: /home/courses/undergraduate/2019/

Disallow: /events-at-queens/queens-staff-information/

Disallow: /events-at-queens/planning-your-event/

Disallow: /events-at-queens/promoting-sustainability-measures/

Disallow: /events-at-queens/conference-and-event-planning-handbook/PlanningYourEvent/

Allow: /schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/FileStore

Allow: /schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/FileStore/ConWEBFiles/ERPA

Allow: /schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/FileStore/EuropeanisationFiles/ERPA

Allow: /directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/SpecialCollections/Manuscripts/

User-agent: 008

Disallow: /

sitemap.xml 200 OK

Type URL Set URLs 1629 entries Valid XML Yes

Sample URLs:

A+

Domain Intelligence

qub.ac.uk — via No registrar listed. This domain is directly registered with Nominet., hosted on JANET Jisc Services Limited, GB

PASS

qub.ac.uk — via No registrar listed. This domain is directly registered with Nominet., hosted on JANET Jisc Services Limited, GB

Registrar: No registrar listed. This domain is directly registered with Nominet.

Registrar lock is NOT enabled

The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.

Hosting: JANET Jisc Services Limited, GB

Got: AS786

Domain expiry

Unknown

SSL certificate

186 days

Issued by DigiCert Inc

Domain age

Unknown

DNSSEC

Status unknown

Protects against DNS spoofing

Hosting

JANET Jisc Services Limited, GB

ASN AS786

143.117.1.58

Registrar

No registrar listed. This domain is directly registered with Nominet.

Unlocked 7 NS records

Expiry timeline

Today

+1 year

SSL expiry Danger zone (≤30 days)

Recommended actions

Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) to block unauthorized domain transfers

Registrar No registrar listed. This domain is directly registered with Nominet.

Name Servers ns0.ja.net, ns2.ja.net, ns3.ja.net, ns4.ja.net, auth03.ns.uu.net, ns1.surfnet.nl, dns-3.dfn.de

Registrant The JNT Association

Hosting

IP Address 143.117.1.58

ASN AS786 (JANET Jisc Services Limited, GB)

Provider JANET Jisc Services Limited, GB

Data source: whois (2.2s)

The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.

Why this matters

Without registrar lock, an attacker who phishes your registrar credentials can transfer the domain in minutes — total brand hijack.

Learn more ▾

Registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited) requires extra verification before any transfer/update/delete. Every major registrar offers it free. Combined with 2FA on your registrar account, it's the strongest defense against domain hijacking.

Source: ICANN / domain-security best practice