Virtual Private Network Services Being Developed for UO Dialup/Wireless Users

Jose Dominguez
jad@ns.uoregon.edu

As part of ongoing efforts to provide UO users with new, easy, and secure ways to connect to the university to use resources that are restricted to internal users, Network Services is working to deploy Virtual Private Network (VPN) services.

These services will be primarily used by students, faculty, and staff who connect to the Internet off campus and need to access the library's online catalogues, Britannica Online, and other resources limited to internal users.

With a VPN, regardless of where and how you connect to the Internet, you can establish a connection to the UO network and make it appear to be a local UO internal connection. This connection can either be insecure (in the clear) or secure (encrypted).Obviously, if you are dealing with sensitive data, you'll want to use a secure VPN providing both authentication and encryption.

All VPN connections will be authenticated and secured using the standard IPSec architecture. Users will enter their current Darkwing, Gladstone, or Oregon account username and password for authentication, and the encryption will be either DES (56-bit) or 3DES (168-bit), depending on the degree of security desired.

Initial VPN services are expected to be available sometime in late February, with full deployment scheduled for spring term. Initial deployment will be available for Windows machines only, but Macintosh users will have access to VPN services at the time of full deployment. We're also investigating the possibility of supporting other operating systems and will keep you informed as more platforms are supported.

If you have questions about VPN services, email either jad@ns.uoregon.edu or nethelp@ns.uoregon.edu.

We've also created a mailing list to discuss this topic at uo-vpn@ns.uoregon.edu To subscribe, send email to majordomo@ns.uoregon.edu with subscribe uo-vpn in the message body.

Illustration showing how your network traffic is routed from your off-campus site through a secure VPN tunnet to UO resources.