Ursinus Public Network Wi-Fi: For Students and Employees

Overview/Introduction

The Ursinus Public network should be used by device such as smart tv's, streaming sticks, and game consoles, etc. Devices that are not capable of entering your Ursinus log in Credentials when attempting to connect to the wireless like with Ursinus Secure. If you have a laptop, smart phone, or tablet that can do this please follow this article HERE on how to connect to the Ursinus Secure wireless network instead. If you are a guest to the college such as Family, friends, visitor, or guest lecturer please click HERE for the instructions on how to access the Ursinus wireless network.

Details

What is it?

The Ursinus Public Wi-Fi network can be used by students/faculty/staff for devices that cannot be connected to the Ursinus Secure Network because they do not have the ability to enter log in credentials (i.e. devices like smart TVs, streaming sticks, game consoles, etc. basically most things that aren't a cell phone, laptop, or tablet).  If you are a student/faculty/staff member and would like to connect your device to the Ursinus Public Network, please follow the instructions below.

How to access this network (Students/Faculty/Staff):

To use the Ursinus Public Wi-Fi Network, a device must first have its MAC Address registered before connecting to the network. After registering your device through the Clearpass portal, the registration will be good for up to 1 year with a maximum of 5 devices per account. So be mindful that depending on when the device is registered it could expire during the school year and result in the device loosing connection to the wireless seemingly randomly. Don't worry you can go into your access your portal (which will be shown in the instructions below) and it will show you the expiration date of your device or if it has already expired.

Please follow the instructions below to login to the portal and register your device before attempting to connect the device to the Ursinus Public network.  Otherwise, you will have to make the device completely forget the Ursinus Public network, unplug it from power, and wait 10 minutes before you can try to reconnect it.

To register a device on the Ursinus Public WiFi network follow the instructions below but first you must be connected to a computer, tablet, or phone that is already connected to the Ursinus Secure network (You can not access the portal on any other wireless network except from a device connected to the Ursinus Secure WI-FI or a device plugged into an Ethernet cable on campus):

1. By clicking the following link you will be taken to the ClearPass Guest portal and will need to type in your Ursinus credentials (consisting of your Ursinus email address and password) in order to log in; you can choose to include the @ursinus.edu portion like in the example, but it is not necessary:

2. After logging in, the main screen will show you any devices you have already registered (with a max of 5 per account).  Please be sure to remove devices you no longer use if you don't want to hit this limit.  Remember:  all devices have a 1 year lease from the time of registration. So the registration could expire during the semester and the device will loose connectingivty at which case it will need to be re=registered in the portal again.

3. To add a new device, click the “Create” button on the right-hand side of the main window to create a new device registration:

4. This form will ask you to fill out the following:
   1. The MAC Address of the device you are registering
      1. NOTE: only register the wireless mac address of the device (you will need to look up how to find this information for your specific device), and only register the device once, registering multiple entries for a single device will cause connectivity issues and you should delete all the entries for that device, make it forget the Ursinus Public network, and unplug it from power for 10 mins before attempting this process again.
   2. A friendly device name of your choosing, e.g. Tom’s xbox, Susan’s firestick, etc.
   3. You Do Not need to change the Account activation or Account Expiration fields (even if you do, they will revert to the default settings).
   4. Lastly, accept the terms of use by checking the box.
   5. Once the form is complete, click the “Create” button.

5. You can now go to the device itself (the one you just registered) and select the Ursinus Public network from the list of available WiFi networks, and your device will connect. The registration could take several seconds or even up to a minute to process in the system, and may require a second attempt to connect to the Ursinus Public wifi before it works.

If you have any trouble with this process, submit a Wireless Networking service request, or contact Tech Support using the information below.

Technology Support:

610-409-3789
techsupport@ursinus.edu