Guest Access to the SVSU Network

Purpose

To allow guest access to the campus network.

Background:

There are primarily two concerns with allowing guests on our campus network.
 

1. Because of US Government regulatory issues stemming from the Patriot Act, we cannot allow open access to the Internet without jeopardizing our current classification as an educational entity. If we allowed open access, we could be classified as an ISP, and would be subject to a variety of time consuming and costly regulations.
    
2. We are responsible for traffic coming from our IP addresses. Internet activity from a guest’s computer could cause SVSU to be blacklisted in the Internet. This may even happen if a guest has a virus.

For these reasons we must control and restrict access to the campus network so that it keeps working for all of us.

General Information

• For the purpose of this discussion, guests can be:
  • Guest lecturers
  • Conference attendees
  • Housing guests
  • Library Public Patrons
  • Others
• The system must be dynamic. Guests can use a space one day, and staff, faculty, or students may use that same space another day.
• With the expansion of the wireless we should not make any distinction between wired and wireless access. Either is the same from the user’s perspective.
  • We will not enforce encryption on wireless use by guests
• Guests can use the ‘unsecured’ open wireless
• We do not want to put any software on a guest’s laptop.
• We do not want to make any ‘SVSU’ changes to a guest’s laptop.
  • Guest’s accounts will be activated from the web page that is already in use.
• It is possible to create multiple IDs with a designated expiration date all at once for large groups like conferences.
• Create one ID on the spot

Procedure

• Guests must be sponsored by an SVSU employee who will be notified at the time that they activate the ID that they will be the point of contact should there be any questions regarding the guest’s network activity.
• All guest IDs will be in a separate container in our user directory to keep them separate from regular SVSU IDs.
• Guest accounts “gc_” are created with an expiration date. This expiration date should not be reset or extended without first checking with the staff member who is “sponsoring” the guest user. The guest user should identify their sponsor.

Deletion of gc_Accounts

• gc_ accounts will be deleted if the account is disable, passed expiration date, or has not been logged in with for 90 days.
• The gc_ delete process runs once per month on the 1^st day of the month.