Electronic Participation

Connectivity, IRC, Blogging

If you do not plan to bring a Laptop to the conference you can ignore everything about the Nomadic network, otherwise read on…

The University of Bristol’s roaming network service is called NOMADIC (‘The Nomadic Network’) it has both wireless and wired services. Once registered users can create a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection from their computer to the access point either over the wireless network or over the Ethernet network. They may now access the internet.

The following services will be offered to Colston Delegates.

• A network connection for your laptop via nomadic network
  • There are 4 ethernet points that can be used by delegates for the wired service. This is available for machines running Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Mac OS 10.2+
  • Wireless Access points covering the Foyer, Main Lecture room and breakout rooms. This is available for machines that have wireless capability and are running Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Mac OS 10.2+ (except those using apple airport and airport extreme wireless cards)
• The Engineering Faculty have also allowed us to use their PC Laboratory, so there will be plenty of PC’s available for delegates to use
• Please Note: The University will not allow delegates to use its SMTP server. So if your ISP or Organisation does allow you to send email using its SMTP server while on another network, you will not be able to send email via your email client (though you will be able to receive email). You can, of course, use various Web mail services provided by your ISP or Organisation.

Delegates from outside the University of Bristol should not try to register themselves in advance of the conference as you won’t be able to - however, you might like to familiarise yourself with the installation instructions for your particular software in advance of the day. Delegates from the University of Bristol, if not already registered, should register themselves under their own user ids, and attempt to setup the software on their own laptops (this is recommended as it may be quite hectic on the morning of the conference). Details of the nomadic network can be found here http://www.nomadic.bris.ac.uk - go to the Signup and Connect section. Installation looks very complicated but if you follow it step by step it will work. CD’s and technical support will be available for installation on the day.

All non University of Bristol delegates will be registered for the nomadic network en mass, you will be notified of your username and password when you register. We will have a gaggle of helpful techies to help you set everything up of the morning of the conference. Delegates arriving early will be able to set up their machines on Sunday afternoon between 3pm until 5pm at the conference venue.

You may require administrative access to your machine, if you are unsure about this or you did not set the machine up yourself, ask the technical person in your organisation for the local administrator’s username and password (you may already be an administrator). Our technical people will not attempt to “break into” a computer where a local administrator’s username and password is not known.

If you have a query in advance of the conference, please contact our Technical Manager Jules.Smith@bristol.ac.uk