By BERT MILLS
You, as a BYU student, do not have your driver’s license and you cannot go for a drive on Route Y until you get it. Route Y is the new intranet network on campus and is only accessible by BYU students, faculty and staff.
I spoke with Shawn Hansen, manager of University Computer Student Services, about Route Y and how students can now log on to this new adventure.
At the moment, there are only two services available for students, the e-mail accounts and a directory service. Other services will become available from other departments, but they are on their own time line, Hansen said.
So the biggest thing currently is the e-mail account that every student on campus has.
A written letter to all the students on campus will soon be sent out letting them know about the new account, Hansen said.
Those students who have Cougarnet accounts received a letter by e-mail on Friday. I received the written letter on Tuesday, which means the letters are beginning to be sent out.
If you are a student right now, you have an e-mail address and the rest will be on as soon as all the bugs are worked out of the system. You do not have to wait until Fall Semester to start using your free e-mail account.
“The majority (of the students) are on it,” Hansen said.
If you have already paid for Cougarnet e-mail service, you can receive a refund from now until the end of the term at the Cougarnet business office in 156 TMCB. But this will close your Cougarnet account and all files will be lost.
I suggest waiting and saving all your files that you wish to keep to a disk. Then let everybody know about your change of address for at least two weeks to give family and friends time to realize that your old address is being turned off.
Those who already have e-mail either through a department or other source, can set up their Route Y e-mail so that it forwards to the address they want to use.
Now let’s say for a moment that a student comes up to me and says, “This is all fine and dandy, but how do I use it?”
To begin with, you will need to go to the starting page for Route Y. The address is http://ry.byu.edu:1512, or you can go to any kiosk and access it through Cougarnet. Anywhere you have Internet access can get you onto Route Y.
If you go through Cougarnet, instead of going directly to the starting page, you will see a webpage with instructions. This page is useful for helping you understand the steps to enter Route Y, if you care to stop and read it.
Either way, the process is the same. You will need to find your NetID. Click the words “FIND NETID”, which will bring up a search page. Type in your first initial and last name. I typed in s mills. Don’t forget the space because I had problems finding my name at the beginning because I did not use the space.
My NetID is sm66. Once found, click the “x” at the upper right corner to go back to the original screen. Your password by default is your birthday. Don’t bother trying to use my NetID, I’ve already changed my password.
The scenic drive is a long explanation about Route Y and how it all started.
You will now have to get your driver’s license. There are two options, reading the driver’s handbook to bone up on the test or just taking the test.
The reason for the driver’s license is to educate students, Hansen said.
The questions and answers were created by students and full-time employees at BYU. The questions range from passwords to pornography and privacy to advertising.
You only have to answer 12 questions correctly to pass. I found many of the questions funny and obvious. If you do miss a question, and I did, then the computer will explain why the answer is wrong and will explain the correct answer.
The nice thing about this test is that you will receive unlimited chances to answer the questions. Personally, I think the Testing Center should allow us to do the same thing.
To help keep track of your progress, a car will travel across the top of the screen as it winds its way through a driving course. At the end, you receive your driver’s license.
At this point you will be required to change your password. Don’t forget to follow the rules learned so that people will not break your code. This way people who know your NetID, like sm66, will not be able to access your account.
Congratulations, you now have full access to Route Y and will never have to take a test like that one again.
Your e-mail address is . You can also look up other addresses on campus through the directory service.
Route Y makes it easier for students to find information they need. This will be very useful once departments and other offices of BYU add their programs to Route Y.
As I have walked around campus, I have noticed more and more students logged onto Route Y. It’s starting to spread like wildfire, but it isn’t perfect yet.
The bugs in the system that still need to be worked out are technical. It involves standardizing the program for web browsers. Most students and campus computers use Netscape as a browser and so the program works best on it, Hansen said.
Route Y will be standardized across all programs when the bugs are worked out. At the moment, certain programs will have trouble accessing the information.
