UF Guest Network FAQ

Any guest to the university may use this network. UF Faculty/Staff/Students must use the "UF" or "Eduroam" wireless networks. The use of this network by Faculty/Staff/Students for brief periods of time in the case of a device level issue that prevents access to "UF" or "Eduroam" is permitted, however once that issue is resolved, the user must switch back to the "UF" or "Eduroam" networks.

First, join the "ufguest" wireless network from your mobile device. When your attempt to browse to the Internet, your browser will be redirected to a portal web page. This web page presents an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) with a button at the bottom to indicate you accept the policy. Once the policy is read and accepted, you will be permitted to access the Internet.

Until a user accepts the AUP, all traffic is redirected to a server which presents this AUP webpage. The easiest way to tell if you are being intercepted is to ping "10.10.10.10". If this address works, you are being intercepted.

Yes, the new system will intercept all HTTP and HTTPS (secure) web traffic to present the AUP. On some browsers, you will get a security warning. This is normal as the AUP portal is "pretending" to be the site you were attempting to reach. If you are using Firefox, the browser will not allow some secure sites to be intercepted. We recommend you browse to www.ufl.edu to assure the intercept works properly, or use a different browser.

Current versions of Firefox do not implement any kind of guest wifi portal detection. They also do not permit some secure sites to be intercepted (such as Google, Facebook, etc). As a result, you will see a security warning that the page cannot be displayed, but you will not given an option to display the page. This is not an issue with UF Guest, but rather a lack of portal detection support in Firefox. Future Firefox versions may implement this detection. Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer seem to work fine. For Firefox, we recommend you first browse to a non-secure website such as www.ufl.edu to be allowed access to the AUP screen.

The UF Guest network has a 1 hour idle timer and a 12 hour absolute timer. This means that if you don't use the network for 1 hour, or you use of the network exceeds 12 hours, you will be re-intercepted and asked to accept the AUP again

We filter TCP Port 25 to prevent the UF Guest network from being used to send spam. Please use authenticated email which typically uses TCP port 465 or 587. Your email provider should have documentation on how to do this with their system. If you use a webmail type system (such as Gmail), you will not be not impacted by this restriction.

Eduroam is recommended for all guests to the university who are affiliated with another Eduroam institution. Eduroam users are not intercepted, are not subject to many of the above restrictions, and have more streamlined access to the Internet. The UF Guest system allows other guests to connect to the Internet.