4.4.1) Getting Ready - Work Computer

Your AERPAW Work Computer

To use the AERPAW Web Portal, and later to access the AERPAW Virtual Environment to develop your Experiment, you need to use a computer of your own - typically your work desktop or laptop.  In what follows, we refer to this as your work computer.  (Of course, you may possibly use different work computers at different times.)

While most computers with basic Internet access will suffice for the web-based interactions with the AERPAW Portal, to continue successfully with Virtual Environment access as required for Canonical Experiments, you must have:

• Administrative authority over your work computer - the ability to install and configure software packages, the ability to install VPN profiles;

• Unrestricted Internet access - the ability to reach the VPN ports that are dynamically generated for your specific Experiment.

In our experience, the best match and most predictable experience in accessing AERPAW is provided by using a work computer running some variant of the Linux Operating System.  While we continue efforts to fully support access using Windows or MacOS computers, the lack of several key pieces of open-source software on those platforms, and the limitation of capabilities even for Administrative users, makes success unpredictable at best.  Further, the required reconfigurations of the OS (and networking stack) may not be something Users may be comfortable with in making on their own personal productivity laptop.

If at all possible, we strongly suggest using a Linux-based work computer, and one in which you do not keep other sensitive productivity-related information, for Canonical Experiment access.