Overview

To access the university's network from off campus, use the Virtual Private Network (VPN). Virtual Private Networking is a method of providing a more secure network connection from public or untrusted networks. When a VPN connection is established, it creates an encrypted communication path between your computer and the VPN server. VPN provides increased security and the same level of access as a direct connection to the campus network. This helps to protect your network traffic from many types of common network attacks, which could be used to expose your personal information. Because the VPN server is hosted within the Texas A&M University firewall, a VPN connection will also provide access to university resources that are not typically available from non-TAMU connections. This service is offered at no charge.

Getting Started

To connect a laptop or desktop to VPN, log in to Connect.tamu.edu. For mobile devices, follow the step-by-step instructions on the VPN page in the Knowledge Base.

 

Guidelines

If you have network-based access lists that restrict access to your systems from the campus network (i.e., 128.194.0.0/16 and 165.91.0.0/16), you will need to modify your access lists to include 128.194.199.0/25, 165.91.48.0/23 and 172.16.48.0/23. VPN users will appear to be coming from these networks. If you are doing restrictions by domain name, all of the IP addresses in the these networks will inverse resolve to domain names in the tamu.edu domain.