Joining the BrasenoseWifi Network – Guide for Students and SCR

In the summer of 2021 the College upgraded its wired and wireless network and replaced BNCWifi with BrasenoseWifi. This upgrade came with several improvements including:

  • One secure wireless password to connect all your wireless devices to the network.
  • Personal VLANs: all devices you join to the Brasenose network are part of your own personal, secure private network and can communicate with each other – just like your network at home.
  • Devices such as wireless printers, games consoles and smart devices (e.g. Amazon Echo) can now be easily connected to the network.
  • The ability to add wired devices that do not have a built-in web browser (e.g. some printers and games consoles) to the network.

This guide contains details of how to onboard your devices to the new BrasenoseWifi wireless network – please read through the instructions carefully and follow all steps in the relevant section before requesting IT support.  

How to join BrasenoseWifi

To begin connecting your wireless devices to the network you must first generate your unique Dynamic Pre-Shared Key – this is a single, secure key that you can then use to connect any of your wireless devices to BrasenoseWifi.

To generate your key, you can either:

A. Visit https://www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/MyNetwork from any device with an internet connection. This can be done from anywhere – even from home! Once the page has loaded, continue to step 1 of this guide.

OR

B. Connect to the onboarding network using a phone/laptop or another wifi-enabled device with a web browser. Look for an open wireless network called BNC-Onboarding and connect to it (no password is required).

Open a web browser on your device and you will be automatically redirected to the onboarding page. If you are not redirected straight away, please try navigating to any website (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk) and you will be redirected to the page shown in step 1 below.

Step 1

Read and agree to the terms and conditions, and then click Start:

First page of the Brasenose network onboarding process

Step 2

On the next page, select University of Oxford Single Sign On:

Onboarding step 2 - selection of authentication method

Step 3

You’ll be prompted to enter your SSO username on the next screen. Please enter your username in the format abcd1234@ox.ac.uk where abcd1234 is your Oxford SSO username:

Onboarding step 3 - entering SSO username

Click Next and enter your password – this is the same password you use to log into your University email account. Next, click Sign in and authorise any prompts you receive for multi-factor authentication (MFA).

If you receive your MFA prompt via a push notification from the Microsoft Authenticator app you may need to open the app for the notification to appear.

Onboarding step 3 - entering SSO passwordStep 4

Once you’ve logged in successfully you will be given the option to set up a Wi-Fi connection or a wired connection. Select Wi-Fi connection:

Wifi or wired network selection menu

On the next screen you will be provided with your personal Wi-Fi key. This can be used to join all your wireless-enabled devices to the network:

Wifi code success page

This code will be sent to your University email address for your records. We strongly recommend that you save this email in a subfolder of your mailbox so you can quickly refer to it the next time you need to connect a device.

Please note that this key is unique to you and must never be shared with anyone else – you are liable for any unauthorised network activity that takes place over connections made using your credentials.

 

Step 5

Disconnect from and “forget” BNC-Onboarding and connect to BrasenoseWifi. When prompted, enter your newly generated key.