UIUCnet QuickConnect Frequently Asked Questions

Open your browser, and connect to any http:// URL. QuickConnect will intercept your connection, ask you for your Network ID and password, and if you enter them correctly, you will be redirected to your original URL.

A popup window will be created after you successfully login. If you leave it open, this window will automatically renew your credentials (without retransmitting your password) once an hour for as long as you are connected.

Because you are going to a secure web site (one which begins with https:// and shows a lock in the lower corner of the browser window), QuickConnect can not intercept your request and redirect you to the login page.

When you first open your browser, go to a regular http:// URL (such as http://www.illinois.edu) and you will be prompted to login.

After you've successfully logged in, you can go to your secure https:// URL without any problems.

Without the renewal window, you will be allowed access to the network for approximately one hour. At the end of that hour, you will be prompted again to authenticate.

Popup or ad-blocking software often blocks this window. The popup window is created by http://quickconnect.cites.uiuc.edu. If you configure your software to allow popups from this site, the popup renewal window should appear the next time you log in.

You are still permitted to access the network. About an hour after you first authenticated, you will be logged out automatically. The next time you visit a web page, you will be prompted to reauthenticate to the network.

Your session may have timed out, or perhaps the hardware running the service was rebooted for maintenance. Just click the login button again, and you will be connected to the network again.

Go to http://quickconnect.cites.uiuc.edu. You will be prompted to log in using your Network ID and password. After you've logged in, if you have a currently open QuickConnect networking session, you can log yourself out.

After you've used your Network ID to log in through Bluestem, QuickConnect places an identification cookie on your system. This cookie stays in effect for up to an hour, if the browser application (Internet Explorer or Netscape, for example) is running. The cookie is removed when your browser window closes.

However, even if you close your browser window and destroy the cookie, you're still allowed to connect to the network for up to an hour. After an hour has passed, if you want to continue networking, you'll need to log in again.

If your renewal window is still running, then your identity is still remembered. You may be presented with the login screen in order for QuickConnect to confirm the identity of your computer, but if your own identity is still verified by the authentication cookie, then you won't need to use your Network ID after you've clicked the login button.

After you authenticate to the UIUCnet Quick Connect service, you are authorized to use the service from that computer for about an hour. The service operates without any software on your computer, so you can close your browser or even reboot your computer without the service's knowledge. If this happens, you will be automatically logged out approximately an hour after you authenticated.

When your browser window closes, your personal identifier (the authentication cookie) is erased, but your computer's identifier in the QuickConnect system is not erased until an hour has passed. If your system hibernates with the renewal window still open, and it wakes up within an hour, both you and your computer are likely to be remembered. If your system reboots, your identity won't be remembered but your computer's identity may be remembered. Depending on how long has passed since you last authenticated yourself, you may or may not be prompted to log in again.

For technical reasons, in order to ensure a robust campus network, roaming between buildings occasionally requires that your computer acquire a new IP address in order to continue to use the wireless service.

Some of the ways to acquire a new IP address include:

• Disconnecting your network connection and then reconnecting it:
  If you have an external wireless card, it may be easiest simply to remove it, wait 10 seconds, and then reinsert it. (If you're using UIUCnet Walkup, unplug your Ethernet cable for 10 seconds and then reinsert it.)
  
  Your computer will request a new IP address as it connects to the network again.
  
  
• Telling the system to release its IP address and renew it:
  Windows XP users may be successful by running the command ipconfig /renew in a command prompt (found at Start -> Programs -> Accessories).

  Macintosh OS X users may be successful in reconnecting by opening their system preferences, clicking on "Network," selecting Airport (or the appropriate interface) and clicking "Configure...". Select the "TCP/IP" Tab and click "Renew DHCP Lease".

For more information, including directions for older operating systems, see Releasing and Renewing a DCHP-based IP Address.

The answer to this is both yes and no.

UIUCnet QuickConnect securely encrypts your username and password when it logs you in to the network, and your password is not part of the information stored in the authentication cookie placed on your system. So logging in is secure.

However, unlike the VPN system (which encrypts all communication between your computer and the VPN server), UIUCnet QuickConnect does not change your network communication in any way once you've logged in.

If you visit a secure web site (https://) or use secure protocols (SSH, SFTP, etc) while logged in to UIUCnet QuickConnect, then that communication is secured by the software involved.

If you visit a regular web site (http://) or use insecure protocols while logged in to UIUCnet QuickConnect, then that communication is not secured. UIUCnet QuickConnect does not add any security to a communication method that is insecure to begin with.

In order to improve the security experienced by UIUCnet Wireless users, many insecure methods of communication (including telnet, FTP, and Microsoft networking) are not permitted over a UIUCnet QuickConnect network connection.

For more information, see UIUCnet QuickConnect and security.

Yes, because there's a special arrangement for antivirus software updating from the on-campus repository.

For recent Windows system users, the first two update repositories listed in the UIUC-configured VirusScan software are an on-campus FTP site and NAI's FTP site. The third repository listed is NAI's HTTP site.

Ordinarily, FTP is prohibited over QuickConnect, but FTP requests to the on-campus antivirus repository are permitted in order to make antivirus updates more convenient. (You will need to be logged in to QuickConnect in order for this to work.)

Alternatively, you can also move the NAI HTTP repository to the top of your access list. For more information on changing repositories, see Autoupdate repositories (Windows Vista, XP, 2000, or NT) or the Mac section of the antivirus pages (Mac users should use http://update.nai.com/Products/CommonUpdater rather than the on-campus AISS FTP site given in the example.)

Note for users of older systems: McAfee no longer supports VirusScan 4.5.1, and Microsoft has stopped providing support for Windows 95, 98, and ME.

Most HTML editing packages provide several ways of uploading edited files to a web server. Some of them are permitted through QuickConnect; others are not permitted.

Permitted upload methods	Denied upload methods
SFTP WebDAV A web interface Making the remote server appear to be a mapped drive on your system using a Novell NetDrive connection with a permitted protocol such as WebDAV	FTP Microsoft networking

Check with your web server's system administrator to find out if any of the permitted upload methods are available on their system for you to use.

Sometimes, websites publish material in frames or use SSI or other methods to insert content from a different location into the page that you see. If part of the content is coming from a standard web port (80, 8080, or 443), that part will display correctly, while any content that's coming from an unusual port won't display.

If you need to access a website that's using nonstandard ports for part of its content, use the VPN server instead.

There are several factors determining whether QuickConnect users can print to a certain printer:

1. Printer drivers and printer location: If you don't have the correct driver to print to that machine when you're part of the regular UIUCnet wired network, then you also won't be able to print to it when you're part of the UIUCnet QuickConnect network.
   
   Likewise, if you haven't defined that printer's network location while you're connected to UIUCnet, you won't be able to print until you do tell your computer where to find that printer.
   
   To resolve driver and identification issues, ask the printer's administrator to help you configure your computer's printer drivers and locate their printer on the network.
   
   
2. IP filtering: If the printer limits who can and cannot print in that location based on what IP address the computer is using, the QuickConnect IP range (192.17.220.0 to 192.17.235.254) may or may not be in the printer's "permitted" list. If it's not in the permitted list, then you won't be able to print to that printer.
   
   
3. Microsoft networking: If the printer uses the LPD printing port, you can print to it (assuming that you have the drivers and that QuickConnect is not blocked, as described in points 1 and 2 above).
   
   However, if the printer is configured to be accessible only through Microsoft networking, then you won't be able to use QuickConnect to print to that printer, for reasons described in the Microsoft section of QuickConnect and security.

If you have problems printing through QuickConnect, you can also try the VPN client. The VPN client will resolve issue #3 (VPN users can use Microsoft networking). However, issues #1 and #2 may still apply (you'll still need correct drivers, you'll still need to locate the printer on the network, and the VPN IP range may or may not blocked by the printer's IP filter).

Microsoft uses port 135 and several others for networking among Windows machines. However, because of ongoing problems with the Blaster worm and others, most entry points to the campus network have blocked the Microsoft-specific ports.

For more information, see the Microsoft section of QuickConnect and security.

Note: There is one configuration of Outlook 2003 which can work with QuickConnect.

If you have Outlook 2003 running on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and patch #331320, you can use RPC over HTTP to connect to the CITES Exchange server. See http://exchange.ds.illinois.edu/OffCampus.aspx for more information.

If you can't run RPC over HTTP (whether because you have a different version of Outlook, you're not running XP SP 1 with patch 331320, or you're connecting to a different Exchange server which doesn't support it), then you probably won't be able to use Outlook through QuickConnect.

AppleTalk is no longer routed over the UIUCnet backbone. For more information, see the news item Retiring the AppleTalk and IPX protocol routing on UIUCnet: May 16, 2004.

This means that while you may be able to use AppleTalk with other computers in your section of the UIUCnet Wireless subnetwork, you won't be able to use AppleTalk to connect to the wired UIUCnet network or the Internet.

Yahoo Messenger often connects through the ports used for telnet and FTP, which have been specifically denied through QuickConnect. For more information, see the known insecure services list.

In general, if a program doesn't communicate through one of the methods listed on the permitted connections list, then it will be denied.

For example, some audio streaming and video streaming sites will encounter problems with QuickConnect even though they're presented through a web browser, because audio streams and video streams are often sent from different networking ports than regular web pages are.

For more information on what is and is not permitted through QuickConnect, see QuickConnect and security.

If you need to use a service which is blocked through QuickConnect, you can use the VPN server instead. The VPN server allows nearly all types of networking to succeed.

UIUCnet QuickConnect doesn't change the IP address you're given. The VPN server does. That's why, when you're trying to connect to the library or the UIUC subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary from off campus, you'll need to use the VPN server to receive a UIUC IP address.