Remote Access Services

While outside the campus, users can have remote access to a number of ITS services. With Internet connection, it does not only allow you to surf the web, you can also access your campus emails at home and transfer files between your home PC and the network drives (N: drive or P: drive) easily. If you have a UNIX account, you can also use telnet software to connect to the corresponding UNIX servers (sun.ied.edu.hk for staff or moon.ied.edu.hk for students).

For staff, other than using Webmail or Outlook Express at home, they may also use MS Outlook for accessing their emails through the HKIEd VPN gateway, if they are using Windows XP from a private computer with broadband connection.

• Accessing Email Outside Campus
• Accessing Network Drives Outside Campus
• Using Outlook at Home/Quarter

Accessing Email Outside Campus

A simple way to get access to your emails outside the campus is to use our Webmail service (http://webmail.ied.edu.hk). All you need is a PC connected to the Internet and a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer). It requires no special setup and you can check your emails easily at home, in Cybercafe, at conference meeting, overseas, etc. Staff may also use MS Outlook for accessing emails by connecting to the campus network through the HKIEd VPN Gateway.

Our mail servers also allow users to access their emails using IMAP compatible software. (Note that our servers do not support POP3 connection.) For example, Outlook Express can be used for this purpose but it requires users to do some setup (see Using Outlook Express for the details).

For more information about our email services, please refer to the document on Email Services.

Accessing Network Drives Outside Campus

Users can access the network drives (e.g. the personal network N: drive, P: drive for sharing among staff in the same department or T: drive for Town Centre users) even if they are not in the campus. All you need is a VPN connected PC. When a connection is made, you may use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software, e.g. FileZilla, to get access to the network drive.

Accessing Network Drives using WinSCP

WinSCP can be used to transfer files between your home PC and the network drive in the campus network. Here it is assumed that you have some knowledge about FileZilla and we will provide the following information and sample screen for making a connection to a network drive.

Host Name/Address

Enter msftp.ied.edu.hk (for accessing the N: or S: drive)

Server Type

Select SFTP - Secure File Transfer Protocol.

After clicking Login button and connected successfully, you will prompt for your network account username and password. Then you will get a window similar to the following one and you can then start transferring files between your home PC (Local System) and the network drive (Remote Site).

Using Outlook at Home/Quarter

To allow staff/student to use Outlook at home/quarter, ITS has implemented a Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology which can establish a secure private connection to the campus network from the public network. Through the HKIEd VPN gateway, staff/student can use Outlook at home/quarter as secure as in the office. We strongly recommended you to use Outlook and VPN at home for processing emails as that can greatly increase your productivity.

To use Outlook and VPN, you need to use Windows XP from a private computer with broadband connection from any broadband service providers. It only takes a few steps to setup VPN and Outlook at home/qurater. For details, please check HKIEd VPN Gateway Setup Procedure and Microsoft Outlook Profile.

For security reasons, a timeout period of two hours has been set for the VPN connection.