About NetReg

A brief history of Network Registration at WPI.

Beginning in 1994, WPI Network Operations (NetOps) brought ethernet networking to the residence halls across the main Worcester campus. To join this network, students were required to purchase network adapters, or NIC, from the Campus Computer Center (CCC) Computer Shop. Each NIC was uniquely associated with a student and physically installed/configured by CCC student workers.

All configurations were done by system administrators. This entailed updating BOOTP and DNS entries while an automated CRON job would push out changes to the appropriate servers. Year over year - as the volume of student computers on the network increased, the IT Staff needed to find a better way for users to join the network.

Version 1: CMU NetReg

In 2005, Frank Sweetser (Class of 1999) and Charles "Chuck" Anderson (Class of 1999) advocated for a single system to store all information about the WPI Network as the next stage. From there, the team could harness automated exporte to create and maintain all records in BIND named and ISC dhcpd.

With much trial and error, the two set about utilizing CMU NetReg originally developed at Carnegie Melon University. Finding a need for more end-user, self-service functionality, Frank and Chuck added some additional integrations:

• Managing NetOps NAGIOS monitoring from the IPAM
• Automating Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Phone provisioning
• Allowing end-user enrollment in PXE-boot groups
• Information Security Suspension functionality
• Quick Registration Walled Gardens for unregistered devices

Version 2: EfficientIP NetReg

Public development of CMU NetReg ended in 2008, and the team was forced to maintain both the network and continued development of NetReg. After having added integrations with NAGIOS for automated system monitoring and firewall ACLs, they found there were no resources to keep NetReg current

With the addition of Ben Higgins (Class of 1997 and current Director of Infrastructure Services), there was a renewed push for more functionality. After an extensive RFP process, EfficientIP SOLIDserver was chosen. A case study of the June 2016 roll-out is available.

Armed with a framework and vendor support, NetOps pushed through even more end-user features with Ben's catch phrase of "Shift Left" to provide users with as much self-service as possible, thus relieving workload from NetOps and IT Helpdesk:

• WPI ITS-wide accessibility for the iCinga Monitoring platform
• Tighter integration with Palo Alto firewalls
• Integration with Aruba ClearPass to support colorless network switch ports

Version 3: EfficientIP NetReg Redux

In 2022, the team wanted to roll out additional network features to the university but were finding further development of EfficeintIP NetReg difficult. So Ben Higgins and Cara Salter (Class of 2025) started a skunkworks project to completely rewrite NetReg in Python using the Flask and Bootstrap libraries. With the addition of Jordyn McKeen (Class of 2022 and current DevOps Engineer), the initial iteration of NetReg 3 was brought to completion in 2024. This version of NetReg has proven to be by far the most flexible and serviceable!

New features include:

• Ability to set and retrieve WiFi Pre-Shared Key for eligible devices.
• Ability to toggle whether a device has an IP address accessible from the public internet. (Coming soon!)