Students living in the residence halls this semester were greeted with a tweaked Cisco Clean Access program for connecting to the NIU network and Internet. Clean Access was first used in fall 2005 to address the abundance of Internet-related computer issues residents encountered.

“Our hope is that it will make it easier for students to get access to the network,” said Mike Stang, Director of Residential Operations.

According to ResTech’s Web site, Clean Access is a program designed to improve network access and stability by undertaking both network management and security issues.

“Clean Access will help residents get online and stay online, getting the most out of their high-speed Internet connection,” according to the ResTech website.

“The changes were intended to streamline the connection process in order to free up time for ResTech to work on problems where students were unable to connect to the network as opposed to students being unaware of how to connect to the network,” Stang said. “ResTech has not experienced a major increase in service calls this year,” he said.

One of the new changes presented residents with a program on this year’s residential network access CD that required the user to install the network connection software, free McAffee Anti-Virus software and register a user name and password. The user name and password are now necessary to connect to the network with the program.

Students must now manually connect to the network every time they intend to use it. A bonus to this feature enables students, even those not living in the residence halls, to connect to the network through a wireless connection, though personal routers and any form of additional personal wireless access points are strictly not allowed.

“This, being my fourth year, is the first year where I never had any problems,” said Pam Kniskern, a senior corporate communications major.

Kniskern also said since Clean Access has taken effect she has not brought her computer to ResTech for virus removal or any other issues.