I’ve had a couple of people enquire as to what’s happening with LUNA and network access, specifically “will it all change”. The answer is “no, it won’t all change”. To cheer some people up, here’s a shot of what the new login page looks like:
You will notice it looks different, but this is just a cosmetic change. It’s the same username, it’s the same password. We’ve just revamped the code which underpins how it looks and feels to make it easier for you to use. You might also notice the presence of a new button labelled “connect a games console”, which does exactly what you might expect. It lets you register a games console to use on the network. Finally, you might notice the addition of an orange blob next to the games console button. This is the new traffic light – it goes red if there’s something actively stopping you getting online, amber if all you need to do is log in (or something similar) without there being a known problem, and green if you’re online and everything is working perfectly.
You’ll be able to give the whole thing a proper whirl next week when we present the demo to various people and start letting you have a play before it actually goes live. The big switchover for the real system is currently scheduled for over the Christmas holidays sometime (as soon as we have a date and time, you’ll know), and we’re going to try time it to cause as little disruption as possible. Most people shouldn’t even notice something’s happened, but there may be a few minutes when you can’t log in followed by a few minutes of things possibly not working entirely right whilst we finish tightening the screws on the new system.
Hi Nick
The use of colour to convey information is not generally recommended especially for users with any form of colour blindness who may have problems distinguishing reds and greens.
Regards
Sue
I’ve raised this concern with people, but unfortunately the specification for ‘traffic light’ stands. I’m working a text element into the final version, to give a clear indication of not only what the status is but exactly what’s wrong.
Nick – what’s “LUNA”?
LUNA – as mentioned in a previous post – stands for Lincoln University Network Access. It’s the updated version of the access manager which currently powers web access from University owned accommodation.
Thanks Nick. I guess you considered ‘ULNA’ and rejected it? 😉 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulna
ULNA would have been more technically correct, and we could have used a witty quip about Radius authentication, but LUNA flew better with the people making decisions.
Hey, i’m going to be starting as a first year sept 2010. Is this the same login screen I will be faced with at ‘The Junxion’? Can I still connect a games console in the same way by clicking the button in the top right?
Thanks.
Hi Matthew,
Good to hear you’re joining the University in September. This login screen isn’t the one you’ll be seeing at The Junxion (although they do have something similar) since The Junxion isn’t owned or operated by the University. It is possible to connect a games console, but it requires some trickery. Hopefully there should still be a guide available which I wrote last year detailing how to connect pretty much anything to the network – but your mileage may vary.
Thanks Mark! Where is this guide?
The guide should be available on the PAVCON forums unless it’s been removed – you’ll be given a username and password to access these forums when you move in.
Note that you may require some extra network hardware to make the magic happen (depending on the type of console), but these are usually available relatively cheaply.