There are both wired (Ethernet 10BaseT) and wireless (802.11b=Wi-Fi=AirPort) access at the Center. There is a printer in each building you can access directly from the network. For information to access wired and/or wireless network and to print at the Aspen Center for Physics, please consult the information sheet that you receive in the packet when you arrive. For security reasons, we do not post the access information on the web.
The rest of the page describes the policy of computer network at the ACP.
The Aspen Center for Physics public network is designed to work similarly to common networks used in hotels and other semi-public access networks. The network requires each user to authenticate upon initial connection so we are able to control access to our resources. Once you are authenticated, you are given full capabilities to reach the Internet, as you would in any random location. (i.e. coffee shop, airport, etc...)
We do not provide an outbound smtp mail relay host, so in order to directly send outbound smtp email from your computer, it is necessary for you to utilize a mail relay that provides remote access from your institution. This may be accomplished in many ways, and it is up to your institution to provide the necessary resources to support this. Many institutions use commercial VPN, or SSH, or SMTP-Auth based secure connections to provide remote access to their resources. So if you experience difficulties, please contact your home IT department for assistance. The Aspen Center for Physics network does not block vpn's or anyh other type connection established from inside our network.
An alternative to using your institution for remote email is to obtain a yahoo, google (gmail), mac.com, hotmail, or similar webmail based account. These services provide support for attachments, are globally available, and good alternative for people who travel frequently. Pay services such as mac.com offer secure mail connections and outbound relay facilities that are useful for people who need large amounts of storage.
If you use IMAP or POP servers from your institution, you can also have web-based access to your own accounts at mail2web.
At the ACP, we no longer offer mail relay for the following reasons. Open outbound relays can be used by virus programs to propagate themselves to the outside world. Spammers often use viruses to look for mail relays in user's email software, and then utilize them to spread spam. Secondly, we cannot control what someone decides to send from their computer, and it is possible that a spammer could potentially misuse a mail relay at our facility. Spam has made it through our network in the past, and has been a problem with our old relay system. As you can understand, this is bad for our image, since the ACP can potentially be blacklisted as a spam source site. And thirdly, mail relays require constant administrative support to keep them current to prevent spammers from utilizing them. So the simple and safest solution is to not provide an SMTP relay at the ACP. This is a common policy at most hotels and convention centers, so in order to protect our network, we decided that it is in the best interest of the ACP and our guests to protect against this misuse of network resources.