Connecting to the Institute's VPN
What is VPN?
VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It allows computers connected to the internet to act as if they were connected to a private local area network, for example, if you were in Australia and started a VPN connection to the Maths Institutes VPN server, your machine would be able to access all the services just the same as you would inside the Institute using the Wireless or Wired network.
Do I have access to the VPN server?
Everyone with a maths computer account has access to the VPN server, however if you find you cannot connect it may be you need to synchronise your password. If you are unable to visit a computing officer to synchronise your password, you can temporarily reset your password so VPN will work. To reset your password, use an ssh client to connect to gate.maths.ox.ac.uk. Once connected, type the passwd command at the prompt. It's OK to use the same password as you are already using.
Note: It may take up to 10 minutes for the password to become active on the VPN server.
Alternatives
The Maths Institute currently offers two VPN alternatives, OpenVPN and the Windows PPTP VPN. We would encourage all users to use OpenVPN, as it is known to produce by far less issues than the Windows internal VPN and it will work in most environments.
OpenVPN (Cross-Platform solution for Windows/OSX/Linux/etc)
Currently we only provide an installer for Windows users, however everyone can install OpenVPN on their machines. Most Linux distributions come with it and there are free solutions for OSX as well.
- Configuration instructions for Windows 2000/XP/Vista
- Configuration instructions for other operating systems
Microsoft PPTP VPN Setup
The software required for a VPN connection is available out-of-the box for Windows 2000 and XP computers, also Mac computers running OSX require no additional software.
- Configuration instructions for Windows 2000
- Configuration instructions for Windows XP
- Configuration instructions for Windows Vista
- Configuration instructions for Linux
- Configuration instructions for Mac OS X
- Configuration instructions for Windows 7