IT Services
A Department of Learner Support Services
If at all possible set your wireless LAN card to auto-connect to any wireless LAN it can see. If you have to specify an SSID in enter 'uobroamnet' (without the ' marks). If you find another wireless network which is not entitled 'uobroamnet' we cannot give you any information about connecting to those. You will need to contact the person responsible for those access points.
In common with the rest of the university network there is no encryption at the traffic level. However the authentication screens do use a secure web server. It is recommended that any sensitive web transactions (for instance using credit cards) are only carried out on sites which use secure web servers. If you connect using the wireless network make sure your ethernet card is not expecting an encrypted network; Windows XP in particular does this by default.
No; this is only possible from the cluster machines around campus. If you have a document on your PC connected to RoamNet you will transfer it to a cluster PC and print it out from there.
No; you may find there are commercial broadband services that can offer you wireless and cabled services where you live. The University web pages can be viewed when you are connected to another ISP.
We cannot provide 100% protection against others users on RoamNet and elsewhere who might infect your machine. Therefore we require you have up-to-date anti-virus software and also have all the latest security patches for your operating system installed. Anti-virus software is available for download, or from the J B Priestley Library Welcome Desk.
Wired RoamNet provides a dedicated network link over a cable to each computer. The bandwidth available to each computer will be the same in every instance and therefore a reliable connection will be established.
Wireless RoamNet works on the unlicensed 802.11b/g frequency. Any person anywhere can use this frequency for whatever use they see fit. Hence there is a very great chance of interference from other non-RoamNet wireless network devices, as well things like microwave ovens and mobile phones using Bluetooth. As such reliable, consistant bandwidth is impossible to predict.
In addition, on all of RoamNet, as the computers connected are mostly not owned by the University there is great potential for inter-computer network interference, such as from viruses or other malicious software. Therefore we do not recommend RoamNet, wired or wireless, but especially wireless, to be used for teaching/lecturing and examinations.
If you are a student please contact your student representatives. There are student representatives on the Computer Users Group. You may also like to make representations via your course rep, or the UBU Communications Secretary.
If you are a staff member and you wish RoamNet, either wired or wireless, to cover a new area please contact ictservicedesk@bradford.ac.uk and they will instigate a job for you. A member of the Big Comms team will get in touch and discuss the technical issues and costs.
If you think there is a fault with RoamNet there are three ways of reporting it - please see the Fault Reporting Web page.
