Connecting to the VPN and Shared Drives

Virtual Private Networks

People often need to connect to the NAU network from home or when they travel for sending and receiving email and getting at their files on campus. However most people who live off campus tend to have thier own internet service provider. As a consequence these user must create what is called a VPN connection back to NAU. This effectively creates a secure tunnel from their ISP back to NAU and allows those people to securely send and receive email and get at files.

If you are not familar with creating a VPN connection please see the information at the following ITS site: VPN Help

Mapping Drives from off-campus

Once you have a VPN connected many users would like to map drives that they are familiar with back on campus.

We have created a little utility that can be installed on a Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 computer that will automatically map drives for you. A screen shot is shown below:

The version for Windows XP can be downloaded from here

The version for Windows Vista or Windows 7 can be downloaded from here
DO NOT CHOOSE RUN FROM THE DOWNLOAD DIALOG - YOU MUST SAVE IT TO DISK FIRST. THEN YOU MUST ALSO RIGHT-CLICK AND CHOOSE "Run as Administrator".
If you do not do this it will not install correctly.

You install this application by double-clicking it [Or in Windows Vista or Windows 7, by right-clicking and choosing "Run as Administrator"]. This launches a WinZip installer:

Just click Unzip, and then Close. DO NOT change the "Unzip to folder" from C:\ as the installer places the files in the correct location on you computer. You should get a desktop shortcut like this: