Okay, if you’re done laughing at the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star piece from last week, I really did want to chat a bit about satellite ISPs.
I am *very* aware that not everyone has high-speed internet access. There are entire swaths of GLOW where you can’t get high-speed internet access (i.e. cable, DSL) even if you wanted to. Also, we have students who are only able to attend college because they get financial aid and the monthly cost of high-speed internet access (or any internet access at all) just isn’t in the budget.
So I’m among the people who try to remind faculty that “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” when it comes to multimedia and fancy things in their online course materials. I also tell faculty that this shouldn’t stop them but that they need to have alternatives for students who cannot get multimedia from home.
So, students, talk to your instructors if you are having problems accessing course materials. You may not like the answer of “then you have to do your work at a campus computer lab” but sometimes that’s the best we all have.
On to the satellite issue.
One of the options I know students and faculty have is a satellite Internet Service Provider (ISP). A satellite card gives you much speedier access than dial-up and has the advantage of being portable if you have it in a laptop.
One of the ‘features’ we have found is that some users (well. most of them as far as we know) who have satellite ISP cannot get to Banner Self Service (i.e. Registration, Student Services, Faculty and Advisor) from within Genesis. You get asked for a username and pin when it should be a ‘single sign on’ process.
There is no username and pin to give to you. It’s the connection between Genesis and Banner that the satellite is interfering with and there’s no solution. Well, there’s a partial solution.
One of the Banner folk (thank you, Amy!) found information for Hughes Net users.
If using HughesNet :
- Go into IE, to internet options and to connections tab. Click LAN settings and choose to use a proxy server by putting a check in that box. Then click the advanced button and enter in the following for HTTP and Secure fields: 69.19.14.10.
- And for the port, put 3128 in the ports for HTTP and Secure fields for port.
- This will slow you connection down noticeably but they will be able to get in to the system
There does not seem to be a fix for Wild Blue. Sorry. And we don’t know anything about any other satellite ISPs.
If we figure anything out or the vendor has a solution for this known defect, we’ll let you know. Until then at least you know that we know that there are some issues with satellite ISPs.
Do you have satellite access? How’s it working for you?
