Gaming for students in residence is a big stress reliever, but when it’s not working properly, it can have the opposite effect.

The team felt good about making this happen for students, feeling that the quality of students’ lives outside of school is as worthy of our time as supporting critical IT systems.

All devices connecting to the U of G network require browser-dependent authentication with a username and password. However, some gaming consoles do not allow users to open a browser, making it impossible for them to authenticate. This put students in the unfortunate position of not being able to use their gaming systems. The CCS Network Infrastructure team (some of them avid gamers themselves!) were committed to fixing this problem and have now configured the network access control (NAC) system to automatically detect gaming consoles, and move them into a network segment that does not require authentication. The team felt good about making this happen for students, feeling that the quality of students’ lives outside of school is as worthy of our time as supporting critical IT systems. Everybody wins!

The next part of this work involves programming the NAC system to recognize new gaming system makes and models as they emerge. This work is dependent on the next NAC software upgrade which will take place in mid-to-late 2019.