Students living and studying in China may experience slow connections, increased latency, and inconsistent access while using Waterloo learning technologies from China. Waterloo has engaged a cloud enterprise network service from Alibaba, a company operated within China, to improve network flows in and out of China. You should see improvements when using the solution for learning technologies (e.g. LEARN, Crowdmark, Bongo), though the degree of improvement can vary depending upon your home province and your residential internet speed.
Note for incoming Fall 2020 students: Not all incoming students have access to the Alibaba cloud enterprise network solution yet. If you see "can't find a password" error on https://checkin.uwaterloo.ca/fetchmyvpnpassword/ it means that you do not have access to it yet. Information Systems & Technology will be adding all students who have selected their Fall 2020 courses soon. |
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Students registered for fall 2019, winter 2020, and spring 2020 terms may use the following 'fetch my VPN password' tool to receive their special login ID and password, https://checkin.uwaterloo.ca/fetchmyvpnpassword/.
Download the 'vpn-ca-cert.crt' file and save to your Downloads folder.
Go to Start menu > search for 'Windows PowerShell (x86)' and right-click and select Run as an Administrator. Enter your credentials when prompted.
Open your Downloads folder > right-click and Copy the file path of the 'vpn-ca-cert.crt' file and save for step 4.
In PowerShell, copy the following four command lines and press Enter after each line .
In line 1 of the command below, replace the "~\Downloads\vpn-ca-cert.crt " with the file path copied from step 3 concatenated with "vpn-ca-cert.crt". |
certutil –addstore -enterprise –f "Root" ~\Downloads\vpn-ca-cert.crt Add-VpnConnection -Name "106.14.170.158" -ServerAddress "106.14.170.158" -TunnelType IKEv2 -EncryptionLevel Maximum -AuthenticationMethod EAP -RememberCredential Set-VpnConnectionIPsecConfiguration -ConnectionName "106.14.170.158" -AuthenticationTransformConstants GCMAES256 -CipherTransformConstants GCMAES256 -EncryptionMethod GCMAES256 -IntegrityCheckMethod SHA384 -DHGroup ECP384 -PfsGroup ECP384 -Force Set-VpnConnectionProxy -Name "106.14.170.158" -AutoConfigurationScript "http://192.168.210.108/example.pac" |
If you received any error messages through the course of the installation process, you should always delete and clear the results of those commands. Please see Common errors for the Alibaba cloud enterprise network solution |
Enter the special VPN username and password provided. You will now be connected to the VPN. Do not enter your normal University of Waterloo username and password.
If you received an error message when connecting, please see Common errors for the Alibaba cloud enterprise network solution |
Download the 'vpn-ios-or-mac.mobileconfig' file onto your device. Click the file to open.
Please see Common errors for the Alibaba cloud enterprise network solution if you are having issues download the file |
This guide will only work if the APT package manager is available on your system (eg. Ubuntu or another Debian based distribution). For other distributions of Linux, contact helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca for support. |
Check for updates to your programs with:
sudo apt update |
You will be prompted for your computer password. Type it in and press Enter. This will run for a few minutes.
Change the permissions of the shell script (.sh file) using:
chmod +x vpn-ubuntu-client.sh |
Run the shell script as root using:
sudo ./vpn-ubuntu-client.sh |
Your computer will now install strongSwan and some dependencies. This may take several minutes. Once you see the text as below, you have successfully installed the VPN client.
To disconnect: ipsec down ikev2vpn To resconnect: ipsec up ikev2vpn To connect automatically: change auto=add to auto=start in /etc/ipsec.conf |
Run:
sudo ipsec up ikev2vpn |
Enter your computer password. You will now be connected to the VPN.
If you are experiencing failure when connecting to VPN on ubuntu, you will also need to run the following code:
This will install resolvconf and you will be able to connect. Remember to reboot before you connect again. |
For more ubuntu VPN connection troubleshooting, see https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/issues/805 |
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Contact the IST Service Desk at helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or 519-888-4567 ext. 44357. |