Getting in Touch with the World

Our official name might be the Academic Computer Center, but most people know us as "the ADN" because we run the ADN, UIC's campuswide computer network and communications backbone, which connects computers of all sizes and persuasions, at home and on campus, to each other and to the Internet. These ADN connections can put you in touch with the world. All you need to get started are:

• A netid and an account
• A networked personal computer with the right software
• To learn how to use them

First, select your netid, a three to eight character long "username" (faculty and staff only; students are assigned netids), and open an ADN account. Actually, you won't open "an" ADN account; you'll open two -- a UNIX workstation account to use for email (and more) and a Novell account to use in the ADN public personal computer labs. And the best thing about these accounts is that any member of the UIC community -- faculty, staff, or registered student -- can have them and they're free. (See Do-It-Yourself ADN Accounts.)

While you might never actually use an ADN public lab or log into your UNIX workstation account to read your email, you need that workstation account to receive your email and you need an ADN netid and password to use any ADN service. (And your ADN UNIX workstation account is where you'll keep your public WWW home page.)

Want to use your own desktop computer? Getting appropriate software for a Mac, Windows, or Windows95 personal computer is easy; we've collected everything you need to access all ADN services into one package -- the ADN Network Services Kit. (See the article on the Kit, The ADN Network Services Kit; it includes the recommended and minimum personal computer hardware needed to run it.)

To network a desktop computer on campus, you'll need an ethernet card and an ADN-ii connection. Virtually every department on campus is "wired"; ask in your department's office for someone to help you.

If you're connecting from home, you'll need a modem and a telephone, and you can dial into the ADN's full-Internet-access dialin lines. If the local telephone charges from your home to these lines are too steep, you might want to consider getting an account with a commercial Internet access provider that offers dialin lines local to your community. Use Inform with the search keyword chicago.

Don't have a personal computer or one that you can use while you're on campus? Then you can use your ADN Novell account to log into and use a Windows, Windows95, or Mac machine in an ADN public micro lab. The lab machines are all connected to the ADN -- which makes them properly networked -- and they have a full range of software. There's one exception: the lab machines do not have at this time email software; you'll have to log into your ADN UNIX workstation account if you want to read or send email while you're using an ADN public personal computer.

The ADN offers free seminars on installing and using the tools in the Network Services Kit and on many other computer-related topics. (See the ADN seminars home page at: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/workshops/ .)