Faculty and staff often find it necessary to conduct research or other University business from off campus. NACS has been providing tools for this class of use for many years.

In particular, certain network resources (such as electronic journals licensed by the UCI Libraries) can only be accessed by authorized users, and that determination is based on whether the request for access comes from a computer on campus. So, the trick to getting to these resources from off campus is to appear to actually be on campus.

NACS has installed and configured a special server, the VPN (Virtual Private Network) which — once you have established your identity with your UCInetID and password — will take your network connection and make it appear to be a local UCI connection.

NACS provides a Web page which allows off-campus users to take advantage of the VPN server simply and conveniently, if the resource you wish to access is a Web site. Information on how to use the WebVPN can be found at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/security/vpn/webvpn.html

If the resource you need access to is not a Web site, NACS offers the Cisco VPN client, a program to download and run on your local computer which makes any or all of your Internet activity seem to originate from on campus. More information can be found at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/security/vpn/