Your Network Account: Topics of Interest

• Your Network Account: What Is It?
• Your Network Home and How to Access It on Campus
• Changing Your Password
• Disk Limits
• Remote Access to Your Network Home Space and SFTP Connection to Home & Web Space
• Your Web Space and How to Use It
• Print Limits in Academic Labs
• Print Services

Your Network Home

Your network home is a working area where files can be stored temporarily for work purposes. It consists of limited disk space is available from one of the centralized Ringling College servers and is accessed over the Ringling College data network. Therefore, this space is available from all computer lab workstations allowing you to continue working on the same files no matter what machine you are sitting at in a specific lab. You own the files in your network home; however, network home should not be used for permanent archiving of files. Students are encouraged to always keep an extra back-up copy of important work.

Google Drive is an excellent cloud-based storage option included along with your email and comes with unlimited storage. This overview of Google Drive covers setting up Google Drive For Desktop (formerly called Backup and Sync) which enables you to setup automatic backup on any Windows or Mac based computer. In the Labs, Google Drive is accessible from drive.google.com. External hard drives are another option if you want quick offline access to your files but can be easily lost or damaged. Google drive also provides file revision history so you can revert back to an earlier saved version or retrieve something accidentally deleted within a certain period of time! 

By default, permissions on user home directories do not allow others to read or access any of your personal files. In general, your web space should be used for sharing files. 

How to Access Your Network Home within Campus:

Your network home is represented and accessed in different ways depending of the platform you are working on:

• From the PC labs running Windows:
   
    Your network home is represented as the Z:\ drive and can be accessed like any other drive from any program after you have logged into the computer.
   
    When you log out of the PC, your network home will not be available to other users who log into the same PC.
   
   If you do not see your network home, contact Technology Support immediately. Several issues may cause your network home to not display properly, so the best action is to contact us to resolve the issue and not to try to reconnect your network home since this action could actually make the situation worse. 

• From the Mac labs:
  
  When you log into the Macs, your network home will automatically be available from the Desktop and the Dock as "NetworkHome" and also from other applications.
  • To access your network home:

• double-click on the "NetworkHome" icon from the Desktop or
• single-click on the "NetworkHome" icon from the Dock.
• When saving from applications:
  expand the save dialog by clicking on the "down arrow" button

• scroll all the way to the left using the horizontal scrollbar
• click on the folder named "Users"
• click on the folder that contains the home icon and has your username as the name
• click on the folder named "NetworkHome" to access your network home and save your files there

If you would like information on how to access your network home off-campus, click here.