UCI faculty, staff, and students have access to a number of restricted online resources — most notably those licensed by the UCI libraries — such as Scifinder Scholar.

Because these resources are licensed specifically to members of the UCI community, however, access to them is normally limited to systems on the UCI network.

Users, however, sometimes need legitimate access to these resources from off-campus as well. NACS currently offers two services that enable such off-campus access. The proxy service was created a number of years ago, and has been jointly maintained with the UCI libraries. More recently, NACS introduced the Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, offering additional functionality and improved performance.

Using the VPN is easy. Just download the appropriate client from the web address listed below, enter your UCInetID and password, and you are on your way. With the VPN in place, your laptop or home computer is treated as though it were right here at UCI, with all the privileges and access that implies.

Because the VPN is so powerful, flexible, and easy to use, the proxy service will be phased out in favor of the VPN over the coming year. NACS continues to monitor the performance of both services, and has recently performed an upgrade on the proxy server hardware to allow it keep up with the demand as we help users transition to the VPN.

For more information, please consult the following web pages.

• NACS VPN Information: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/security/vpn.html
• NACS Proxy Server: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/network/proxy/