Wireless routers

Access

The Nevis particle physics group maintains several wireless routers throughout the upper portion of the Nevis site. They are all protected by an access code, which is displayed on the doors to student rooms in the research building (including room 115, the library) and on small signs located throughout the Mansion house.

Networks

The current networks associated with the particle-physics group are:

You may see other network names than the ones listed above, probably without password protection. Those were set up by other research groups. Please do not use them.

Wired versus wireless

As noted in the discussion of the Nevis particle-physics networks, the wired connections in most Nevis offices connect to the private network, while the wireless connections connect via the sandbox network.

The practical differences between using the two networks:

• The wireless network does not have a default domain. The command ssh hogwarts will work while on the wired network, but it's necessary to type ssh hogwarts.nevis.columbia.edu while on the wireless network.

  To get around this, you can set a default domain in the network settings on your laptop. The procedure varies between Mac, Linux, and Windows; look around the Network settings control panel, under DNS.

• The Nevis network services are not available on the wireless network, at least no more than they would be to anyone trying to access from outside Nevis:
  • You can't mount disks via NFS or automount
  • You can't browse for printers using CUPS
  • Machines on the private network are invisible to the wireless sandbox network.

Mansion house

The wireless network in the mansion house connects to the network in the research building via a fiber line. The routers in the mansion house are older models, and have separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz network names. You may have to try both versions to see which one suits you; the 5GHz network is faster but its range is smaller.