What Does Your NetID Do for You?

When you become a member of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) community, you are granted access to the campus network. The main keys to this access are your Network ID (NetID) and NetID password.

Your NetID

Your NetID is your unique identifier as a user of UIUC computing and networking facilities. It's how you identify yourself to UI Direct (glossary: UI Direct), NESSIE, Express Email, the Instructional Computing Sites (glossary: Instructional Computing Sites), and numerous other computing services on campus.

Your NetID password

Once you've entered your NetID to identify yourself, you need to prove that you are who you say you are (the computing term for verifying that you are who you say you are is "authentication"). To do this, you provide your "NetID password."

You may occasionally hear people mention Kerberos, which is a secure authentication mechanism used by many computer applications all over the world. Kerberos is used at UIUC to authenticate users of many applications (e.g., UI Direct, NESSIE). That's why sometimes people call the password you use for these applications your "Kerberos password." It's simply another name for your NetID password.

What your NetID and NetID password do for you

Your NetID and NetID password allow you to:

• access residence hall computer labs (http://www.housing.uiuc.edu/computing/default.htm)
• access Walkup computing facilities (http://www.cites.illinois.edu/walkup/)
• edit your campus electronic phone directory entry (https://ede.cites.uiuc.edu/)
• enter NESSIE (http://nessie.uihr.uillinois.edu/)
• enter the Site Licensed Software Web Site (http://www.cites.illinois.edu/software/softwareguide.html), and
• enter the CITES Password Home Page (http://www.cites.illinois.edu/passwords/), where you can activate and change the passwords for most of your computing accounts

A number of other applications that reside on secure Web servers (you can recognize them because the URL starts with https rather than http) prompt you for your NetID and NetID password.

If you're a student, your NetID password is sent to you through ordinary mail before your first semester begins. When you get an account on CITES Express Email, the Engineering Workstation Systems (EWS), or the CITES Instructional Computing Sites (ICS), you are asked to set the password for each system when you initialize the account. For security reasons, it's a good idea to use a different password for each system, and especially important to make your NetID password unique. Note that when changing your NetID password, email password, EWS password, or ICS password, you'll have to enter your existing NetID password first.

For information on how to change your NetID password, as well as your other passwords, see the "Guide to Passwords."

Since your NetID is your unique identifier and your NetID password gives you access to personal information (e.g., your class schedule or benefits information), you should never share your NetID or NetID password with anyone.