UVic VPN on macOS

It’s built in!

Connecting to the UVic VPN gives you access to all the internal assets from anywhere, like wireless printing and personal network drive storage, which is awesome. The UVic VPN set-up documentation instructs you to download and install the Cisco application to connect… but Mac OS X 10.6+ already has a Cisco-compatible VPN client built in, so let’s use that.

The VPN configuration is accessible from the Network section of System Preferences.

Open that up,

Opening Network preferences pane.

and in the left column, click on the + sign to “Add a new service”.

Adding a new service.

Set Service Name to whatever you like (how about “University of Victoria”?).

Interface: VPN

VPN Type: Cisco IPSec

Service Name: University of Victoria

Creating a new Cisco IPSec VPN service.

Add your Netlink information (leave the password blank) and add the server address of the VPN:

Make sure you’re not including the “@uvic.ca” when entering your Netlink ID in Account Name field.

Server Address: vpn.uvic.ca

Account Name: <NetlinkID>

Password: (leave this blank)

Adding Netlink information.

Then, under Authentication Settings, use the following keys exactly as they’re written:

Shared Secret: Anything

Group Name: Everyone

Authentication settings dialog.

You can check the Show VPN status in menu bar checkbox to add an icon in your menu bar, from which you can easily connect to and disconnect from the UVic VPN.

Click OK. Then click Connect.

Enter your Netlink password in the dialog that pops up. You will be required to enter your password every time you connect to the UVic VPN.

Account Name: <Netlink ID>

Password: <Netlink password>

VPN Connection password dialog.

Click OK.

If the connection is successful, you will observe one final dialog displaying a brief message about the terms and conditions of using UVic’s VPN.

Brief summary of terms dialog.

Click OK.

Boom. You are now connected to UVic’s internal network.