The Visitor network is a SLAC owned network which is outside the SLAC Network Firewall. Users connected to it are treated as if they were on any commercial or public ISP and will be assigned, via DHCP, a 198.129.n.n IP address. Because you are outside the firewall you should consider your connection very insecure. All incoming connections from the internet are blocked. It is the responsibility of users of the Visitor network to protect their communications, e.g. by using a Virtual Private Network.

The visitor network is meant for light casual use and to provide an easy network connection for SLAC visitors, collaborators, conference/meeting attendees, vendor demonstration etc. Do not place mission critical applications on the Visitor network.

About the visitor network:

• Connect by using Ethernet or with a wireless laptop connection.
• There are no charges for using the visitor subnet
• The visitor network is available in SLAC conference and meeting rooms and in areas supporting wireless networking.
• Set your laptop network configuration for DHCP. There are no static or assigned IP addresses available. A DHCP server will provide your laptop with the necessary network information e.g. IP address, gateway address, and DNS addresses.
• To connect to the visitor network for the first time you will need to open a web browser and attempt to connect to any normal internet web site (we suggest http://www.slac.stanford.edu). If your browser was already running, you may have to hit the "refresh" button.
  You will be redirected to a portal web page that provides basic information about the SLAC Visitor Network and asks you to provide some information about yourself. The purpose of asking you for this information is so that SLAC IT can locate you in the event that your computer has a virus or causes problems with the network. Re-registration is required if a device is not seen on the network for more than 2 weeks. \
  Before you can proceed to the internet, you will need to agree to the SLAC Acceptable Use Agreement regarding network use. After you agree, your system will be given regular internet access.
• To access resources made available only to the SLAC interior network (134.79.nn.nn), use VPN, SSH, or Citrix
• Local network access between computers on the Visitor network is blocked
• To print from the Visitor's subnet see Printing at SLAC. If you have a SLAC userid then you can also use the SLAC VPN to access the windows print server on the SLAC network.
• Support for the visitor network is on a best effort basis. If a problem is reported we will try to address the issue in a timely fashion. Priority for addressing problems will naturally go to networks which are more critical to the SLAC mission:
  • Problems should be reported to the SLAC IT helpdesk, ithelp @ slac.stanford.edu.
• We monitor the utilization of the Visitor subnet looking for capacity issues, so we can add more capacity when needed. We also scan it for vulnerabilities such as unencrypted passwords.
• Hosts on the visitor network that are seen as possible 'scanning hosts', including some  P2P software such as BitTorrent, will be put in the penalty box and have their network speed and throughput drastically reduced.

An alternative to the visitor network is the eduroam service available at SLAC and documented on the page Eduroam service at SLAC.

More information on the visitor network

• Penalty box
• SLAC Visitor Network
• Using the SLAC Visitors network
• Visitor network policy
• Wireless networking at SLAC
• Also see Contractor Network Support Policy