noticeboard.ru.ac.za

For some time, the recommended wireless network for Rhodes staff, postdocs, and guests has been the ru.ac.za wireless network. This network is now deprecated in favour of the eduroam wireless network, which has been offered at Rhodes for several years and has been the only wireless network available to students since the beginning of 2013.

All new devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) should be configured the use the eduroam wireless network rather than the old ru.ac.za one.

If you are currently using the ru.ac.za wireless network, you may continue to do so for the time being. The old network will not be discontinued until early 2014. However, when the opportunity presents itself, you are encouraged to switch to using the eduroam wireless network instead.

Changing from the ru.ac.za to eduroam network is simply a matter connecting to the new network. You will not need to re-register your device on the network, and the services that are available to you when at Rhodes are identical on both networks. The only real difference between the two is that you have to add @ru.ac.za after your username when connecting to eduroam, whereas this is optional when connecting to the ru.ac.za network. This is so the network knows you're from Rhodes rather than, say, UCT.

For information on the eduroam wireless network at Rhodes and elsewhere, please see http://www.ru.ac.za/it/resources/wireless/eduroam/.

The transition arrangements for ru.ac.za are as follows:

• For the time being, both networks operate in parallel. No immediate action is necessary.
• Towards the end of 2013, we'll stop announcing the ru.ac.za, so that it is not visible when trying to connect a device. The intention of this is to make it more difficult to connect new devices to the legacy network (it will be possible, but only by manually configuring the network). Devices that are already configured to connect to the old network will continue to do so as before.
• Early in 2014 we'll phase the ru.ac.za network out completely. This will be timed to ensure that the bulk of upgrades handled through the central budget process have been completed. The exact timing will be announced to ict-announce@lists several weeks in advance, once there's greater clarity on upgrades. However, we will not completely discontinue the network; instead, connecting to it will present an error message that tells people they need to reconfigure their device.
• A few weeks after the formal end of life, we'll completely remove the network.

Please see http://noticeboard.ru.ac.za/post.5532696 for information about a change in realm.