At Hampshire, computers play an important part in academic and social life. Every dorm, mod, lab, and academic or office building is fully networked. There is wireless coverage in all academic buildings, and we are in the process of deploying wireless coverage to the dorms. Hampshire College’s network consists of a fully-switched infrastructure with a gigabit fiber backbone and 100base-T to the desktop. Hampshire is connected to the Internet via a redundant link to the Five College Fiber Network and also a DS3 to Paetec. Our voice traffic and hampguest wireless network traffic go out over the Paetec link, and the rest of our commodity Internet is purchased from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and delivered over the Five College Fiber Network.

Network services include access to and assistance with: email, the Internet, printing, the Five College library catalog, the Five College course catalogs, and academic research databases.

Academic computer labs are located on the third floor of the library, as well as in the Airport Lounge and Bridge Café, and are available for student use 7 days a week, 12-16 hours a day. In addition, Hampshire College offers state of the art labs specializing in natural and computer sciences, as well as advanced media facilities for video and image editing. These labs house Macintosh, Windows, and Linux computers connected to the campus network.

Security is a serious concern for all academic institutions, and Hampshire College is no exception. We follow a traditional security model consisting of an edge firewall device, multiple virtual Local Area Networks, and multiple subnets. This enables networking to secure sensitive data traffic and manage bandwidth as well as applications.

In order to access Hampshire College’s network you need to register via the NetReg portal. The first time you access our residential network with a web browser, you will be prompted for your HampNet username and password. This registration is valid for the entire academic year.