Network
OS X v.10.4
Macintosh
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Network |
Wellesley's computer network facilitates communication among faculty, staff, and students using networked computers and networking software.
CONTENTS
6. MeetingMaker
Wellesley College, like most colleges and universities around the world, uses a network of underground cabling to connect hundreds of computers to each other. This network is an ethernet network, which uses high-speed technology for fast data transfer among computers within the college community. All buildings, including dorms and satellite buildings, are connected to the campus network, and each room usually has several network connections, which resemble phone jacks but are used as computers jacks (also called ports or drops). In residence halls, there is a "port per pillow," implying a network drop for every student.In addition to this local area network, Wellesley also has a high-speed cable connection to the outside world through a commercial carrier. These technologies, in combination, allow members of the college community to send and receive e-mail messages both within the community and externally, to browse the World Wide Web and to share data files.
Faculty, staff, and students at Wellesley all have e-mail accounts (called their First Class account). Through FirstClass, they can access electronic mail and conferences. FirstClass offers many other useful functions such as accessing basic information on other users with the Directory, checking who is logged on with Who's Online, organizing your mail into folders, and putting conferences on your FirstClass desktop so you can easily see when there are new messages in them.
Conferences are collections of messages for groups of FirstClass users. Conferences often contain subconferences. Some conferences are accessible by anyone with a Wellesley FirstClass account and others are limited to members of a course, club, interest group, committee or department.
For information on using your First Class account, refer to the Wellesley College Computing FirstClass documentation.
The World Wide Web is a vast collection of informational sites, stored on computers and linked together by references to other sites. For example, the Wellesley College web site may have a link to a movie database, which links to a page about a particular actor, which links to a page on that actor's favorite recipes. The possibilities for locating information are endless.
Safari is an application for browsing the World Wide Web. Wellesley College recommends you use Safari, but Firefox is also available for browsing the World Wide Web.
For more information on Safari, refer to the Wellesley College Computing Safari documentation.
It is possible to set up your computer to reach a file saved on another computer or server. A server is a computer whose sole purpose is to store files that can be accessed from other computers. You can also set up your computer to be accessible from other computers if there are files you want to share with colleagues or if you would like to be able to access your computer from other locations on campus.
OS X v.10.4 allows you to connect to other Macintosh computers as well as Windows computers. From the Go menu in the Finder, select Connect to Server. In the Server Address field, type smb://computername. The file servers that you selected will appear as icons on your desktop.
For more information on connecting to servers at Wellesley, check out the Connecting to Servers documentation.
Community on NTM
Community is a folder on a server called NTM that is accessible to the entire college community. It can be used on Macintosh and Windows computers. This versatility allows it to house various folders for temporarily sharing files and downloading software.
To connect to NTM, go to the Go menu in the Finder and select Connect to Server. In the Server Address field, type smb://NTM. Choose Community and the icon will appear on your desktop.
One of the folders in Community is called the 24 Hour Drop. The 24 Hour Drop is used mainly if you are away from your computer and don't have a disk to save your work. Simply drop the file in the 24 Hour Drop using the computer you are working on and take it off 24 Hour Drop when you are back at your computer. Be aware: All documents on 24 Hour Drop are deleted daily. They are also accessible to the entire college. Therefore, do not leave important or confidential documents on the 24 Hour Drop. For more information, read the 24 Hour Drop Readme in the 24 Hour Drop folder.
Fetch is the application most often used on Macintosh computers at Wellesley College to upload webpages so they are accessible on the internet.
For instructions on how to do this, refer to the Wellesley College Computing Fetch documentation.
Meeting Maker is a personal, networked scheduler program that allows you to maintain your own calendar of meetings and activities. MeetingMaker can be configured to allow others to access your calendar. It can be accessed from all college-owned computers on campus and from computers off-campus. Faculty and staff may obtain accounts.
For instructions on how to use this application, refer to the Wellesley College Computing MeetingMaker documentation.
Working with Desktop Applications in OS X v.10.4 Working with the Wellesley Network in OS X v.10.4 (network applications and sharing files) Return to Welcome to OS X v.10.4