Students living and studying in China may experience slow connections, increased latency, and inconsistent access while using UWaterloo learning technologies from China. UWaterloo 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.
About this service
UWaterloo provides this service using the Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Network.
Alibaba Cloud, also known as Aliyun, is a Chinese cloud computing company, and subject to laws in China or surveillance by authorities in China
Alibaba Cloud's terms of service is available here
Use of this service is optional. You are under no obligation to use this service.
Alibaba Cloud doesn't hold, or have access to, any UWaterloo records, including your 8-character username (e.g. j25rober), password, student ID number, name, and UWaterloo email address
The University of Waterloo cannot ensure or warrant the security of Alibaba Cloud's product and services
The service is meant to be used only for learning technologies in your courses (such as LEARN, Crowdmark, PebblePad, Bongo), and only those applications are enabled through this solution. It does not lift restrictions on resources that are not generally available to you.
You may find the troubleshooting steps of the common errors here Common errors for the Alibaba cloud enterprise network solution
Here are a list of sites allowed through the VPN: https://ns-info.uwaterloo.ca/urlpermitlist/
For incoming students
Not all incoming students will have access to the Alibaba cloud enterprise network immediately. If you see a can't find a password error message on this page: https://checkin.uwaterloo.ca/fetchmyvpnpassword/, this means that you do not have access to it yet.
If you have any questions or concerns about this, contact the IST Service Desk
On this page:
Accessing your login credentials
Students can use the following fetch my VPN password tool to receive their special login ID and password: https://checkin.uwaterloo.ca/fetchmyvpnpassword/.
How to connect on Windows 10
Installation
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"
Make sure your PowerShell outputs are the following before proceeding to the next section:
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
How to connect
Go to Start menu > search for VPN and click on VPN settings.
Select the 106.14.170.158 network and click Connect.
Enter the special VPN username and password provided. You will now be connected to the VPN. Do not enter your normal 8-character username (e.g. j25rober) and password.
Note
If you received an error message when connecting, please see Common errors for the Alibaba cloud enterprise network solution