The Alibaba Global Accelerator service provides a secure and stable network connection from designated locations outside of Canada and the US so that students can connect to UBC learning applications, tools and information. The service is a dedicated network connecting various sites to North America and then UBC. The Alibaba Global Accelerator service works in conjunction with UBC's VPN service. It is currently set up in three locations in China, and other international locations will be assessed as we develop the service further.
UBC is offering this service as a result of the current pandemic leading to the UBC 2020 Winter Term 1 being held online. At this time, the service is offered to assist students in China to securely access UBC learning resources when they cannot physically access the University network.
Currently the service is configured for three locations in China (North China, East China, and South China) and only students living near one of these areas will be eligible to use this service. The service is not optimized for countries outside of China at this time. We will continue to re-evaluate the services' performance and other locations may be added as we develop the service futher. If you would like to provide feedback for a site that should be added to this service, please contact the LT Hub https://lthub.ubc.ca/support/lt-hub/contact-lthub/
To access the service:
- If you login as above and experience issues, contact the IT Service Centre Help Desk to request that your CWL be added to student.int UBC VPN pool
- Use your existing UBC VPN client to connect access the service:
- Use your VPN client to connect to one of the three of IP addresses (which correspond with the three locations in China where this service is currently set up)
- Your CWL login credentials will be in the form username.student.int
Full instructions are available at https://www.it.ubc.ca/vpn/international
At this time the Alibaba Global Accelerator service is set up for access in three locations in China. We will continue to re-evaluate the services' performance and other locations may be added as we develop the service further. If you would like to provide feedback for a site that should be added to this service, please contact the LT Hub https://lthub.ubc.ca/support/lt-hub/contact-lthub/
The purpose of the Alibaba Global Accelerator service is to allow secure access to UBC Teaching and Learning sites and other online resources that are related to your UBC academic work. To maintain connection speed and bandwidth availability, access to some commercial services may be restricted. All sites in UBC’s domain (.ubc.ca) are accessible for the Alibaba service. A list of allowed UBC learning tools can be found at https://lthub.ubc.ca/guides/. If you encounter an academic-related service that you are unable to access, please contact the IT Service Centre Helpdesk and provide them with:
- the website URL you are trying to reach
- the name of the online service you are trying to reach
- the course you need to access this website for
The purpose of the Alibaba Global Accelerator service is to allow secure access to UBC Teaching and Learning sites and other online resources that are related to your UBC academic work. To maintain connection speed and bandwidth availability, access to some commercial services may be restricted. All sites in UBC’s domain (.ubc.ca) are accessible for the Alibaba service. A list of allowed UBC learning tools can be found at https://lthub.ubc.ca/guides/. If you encounter an academic-related service that you are unable to access, please contact the IT Service Centre Helpdesk and provide them with:
- the website URL you are trying to reach
- the name of the online service you are trying to reach
- the course you need to access this website for
To facilitate student collaboration, UBC has provided Microsoft Teams and OneDrive. More information on these services can be found at www.it.ubc.ca/teams and www.it.ubc.ca/onedrive.
UBC requires you to use the UBC VPN (Virtual Private Network) when you use this service. This VPN will provide an additional level of security for your communications.
Yes, there is limited bandwidth available for the connection from your international location back to UBC. As well, that bandwidth is shared by all international UBC students using the Alibaba GA service. For that reason, we ask that you please be responsible with your use of the service. Please ensure you are using the service only for University related research and learning purposes. If you must do significant data transfer for research and learning purposes, we recommend doing this off-hours (at night) as much as possible and limit simultaneous downloads of large course files or videos. Should we note excessive data transfer by an individual that does not appear to be UBC research or learning related, we will issue a warning and if the behavior persists, removal from the service.
