Getting Connected to the Colgate Network

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Colgate University provides both wired and wireless connections to the network. Every residential room has 1 Ethernet port per person and wireless is available through out campus.

Wireless, while it is available through out campus, is still considered a supplement to an Ethernet connection. Colgate just installed a new wireless system that will provide students with high speed connections to the network.

To connect using wireless follow these instructions: http://wiki.colgate.ed

Registering Your MAC Address

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The Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network cards. It's important to register your MAC address so you can use Ethernet through out the campus.

For instructions on looking up your MAC address for a your type of computer go to the Colgate wiki.colgate.edu.

Adware and Spyware

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Pop-up advertisements have been part of the web experience for years but if you see pop-ups when your are not browsing the web then your computer may have been hijacked by malicious software known as adware. There are many differences between adware and viruses but both can slow the performance of our computer and may cause serious problems.

Spyware refers to programs that install themselves without permission and monitor anything from browsing habits to passwords and even adware programs usually perform some kind of tracking for market research.

Some adware can be installed unintentionally along with other applications. Purveyors of adware exploit the assumption that most people will not read the fine print. File-sharing programs, some free games and utilities are notorious for installing aware.
Some adware and spyware can be installed without permission when you visit web sites. This code can hijack the web browsers and change the default home page while installing adware. The best way to prevent this is keeping your anti-virus software up-to-date and running weekly or daily scans. For more information and links to help prevent and find adware software go to: http://wiki.colgate.edu/itwiki/AcademicTechnology:STRG/PublicPage#Software_Tools

Free Virus Protection

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Many computers on campus or at home, with either no virus protection software or out-of-date software, are damaged by viruses or malware. You can reduce your risk significantly by updating your virus software at least weekly. Computers without update anti-virus software are not allowed on the Colgate network. We strongly recommend that you either purchase antivirus software or use Colgate University's antivirus software provided to you free for personal use.

For more information and to download the EPO agent (Colgate's free Antivirus software) go to the Colgate wiki.

Protect your data before disaster strikes!!!!

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Without fail every semester someone falls victim to file corruption. Most often it happens at inconvenient times, for instance at deadlines. Losing your paper or research data will not get you out of the assignment or an extended deadline so be proactive and save your data multiple ways. Many things can cause a file to become corrupt: malware, viruses, power surges, application crashes and hardware failures.

Here are some tips to help you save your final project and important data from being lost.
Save your work often and use multiple methods of saving: harddrive, USB drive, email it to yourself and use free network storage such as Mozy.

This method may seem extreme until you lose 4 hours or more of your work and can not retrieve a backup of it from your harddrive. At that point you'll be glad you took 20 seconds out of every hour to backup your work. Remember there is no excuses or extended deadlines allowed for lost data, be smart by being proactive.