Simulcast: FAQ

For the vLive! student, the access period to the archived sessions, the VPN labs, the MP3 files, OnDemand online training bundle (if purchased), and the GIAC certification exam (if purchased) is 6 months from the date the vLive link becomes available in a student's portal account.

The vLive student will find SANS Account Dashboard access to the OnDemand slide deck and assessments by the 2nd or 4th day prior to the start of their vLive! course.

You will be able to login to your class approximately 1 hour prior to the start of the class.

Login to your SANS Account at https://www.sans.org/account/. Click on 'SANS vLive!' and then click on the link for your SANS vLive! class. On this page there is a link list of Sessions. Your session will be labeled 'Live Session.'

Click on the "Live Session" link then click OK in the Java Web Start popup. Your Course Meeting will download and open.

Yes. SANS vLive! utilizes cutting edge webcast technology and collaboration software to provide the same live interactive virtual classroom sessions you get from a SANS security conference, delivered over the web, in the comfort of your home or office.

Yes, vLive! classes are interactive sessions that allow you to view and run labs. The VPN labs are available to you for 6 months.

SANS vLive! utilizes the same course books, labs, and top instructors you will find at a SANS conference.

Each SANS vLive! session is archived 2 hours after the live broadcast, and available through your account dashboard for 6 months from the course start date.

Please contact vlive-support@sans.org for technical support.

Yes. Please contact SANS vLive! at vlive@sans.org to receive rates and instructor availability.

You can receive CPE credits for SANS vLive! CPE credits vary on the classes. Students can receive 1 CPE credit per training hour. For example, SEC 504 is 36 training hours and that generates 36 CPEs. Be sure to enter your CISSP# when registering if you would like SANS to submit your CPEs to ISC(2).

The GI Bill provides financial aid for courses taken through an accredited educational institution. SANS is an independent organization, and courses taken directly through SANS do not qualify for assistance under the GI Bill.

However GIAC Certification is eligible. Details provided below.

For group discounts please send an email to vlive@sans.org.
Special offers can be viewed at http://www.sans.org/virtual-training/specials

The SANS Account Dashboard is the gateway to SANS training materials. All SANS vLive! webcasts, online study materials, practice tests, and GIAC certification information are accessed through the SANS Account Dashboard.

In the event you do not ALREADY have a SANS account, upon registering, an account and PASSWORD will be automatically created for you.

SANS accounts are associated to the email address used when registering and your email address is your USER ID.

ALL SANS-RELATED CORRESPONDENCE WILL BE SENT TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS YOU PROVIDE UPON REGISTERING.

Please be certain that you can receive email from sans.org, giac.org, and giac.net email addresses to ensure you receive all correspondence.

To access your SANS Account Dashboard, go to: https://www.sans.org/account

Enter the email address you used when registering for SANS training -- this is your USER ID.

Enter your password.

Please use only ONE email address [the same one you register with] when communicating with SANS, as your email address serves as your USER ID.

• Go to the Personal Information page.
• Enter your new password in both the New Password and Confirm Password fields.
• Enter your current password in the Current Password field and click the Save button.

Students may have several different SANS Accounts, due to using DIFFERENT email address at the time of registering for training.

To access SANS online study materials, you MUST use the SAME EMAIL ADDRESS used during registration as this serves as your USER ID.

To access your account, login at: https://www.sans.org/account.

• Go to the Personal Information page.
• Enter your new email address in the Email field.
• Enter your current password in the Current Password field and click the Save button.
• You should receive a message at your new email address containing an activation link.
• Go to the activation link to verify your new email address.

If you have questions not answered above, or have any problems with your SANS Account, please contact: account-support@sans.org

CPU:Intel-based systems should have Pentium III 500 MHz or better CPU.PowerPC based systems should have a G3, G4 or G5 processor.

Memory:
The computer should have at least 256 MB of RAM.

Disk Space:
The computer should have at least 20MB of disk space free.

Audio:
The computer needs to have a sound card. You either need built-in speakers (common on laptops) or external speakers or a headset plugged in to the audio speaker jack.

A microphone is optional. The primary method for asking questions will be by using the embedded Direct Messaging capability in the Elluminate session.

Camera:
A video camera is not required for SANS vLive! classes or SANS webcasts.

You can use most modern operating systems.

Windows: You can use 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7. For Windows 2000, likelyboth Workstation and Server will work. Even though it's not listed,Windows 2003 should work also. For Windows XP, both Home andProfessional versions are supported.

Mac OS: You need to be using either 9.2 or 10.2 or newer for the 10.x branch.

Unix: Solaris and Linux are explicitly supported. Most likelyother Unix variants will work as well as long as you have the JavaRuntime Environment installed.

Your computer needs to have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) software installed. This provides the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) needed toprocess the Java code used by Elluminate.

The 1.3.x and older 1.4.x versions of JRE will NOT work as they do notproperly support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which is used to encryptthe network connections.

Any 5.0 Update ## or 6.0 Update ## version of the JRE software will work. You can get the JRE software from http://www.java.com.The latest version at this time is 6.0 Update 19.

If you have an older version of the JRE installed, after updating to a newer version, you should uninstall the older version.

Elluminate will work with network connections as low as 28.8Kbpsdial-up connections. We recommend a broadband connection to avoid excessive buffering during class.

The only network connections that are not recommended for use with the SANS vLive! classes and SANS webcasts are satellite connections. Theproblem is the latency introduced by the time it takes for the signalto go up to and come back down from the satellite.

Elluminate's preferred connection method is to use TCP port 2187 toour server. Our Elluminate server's IP address is currently66.35.45.51. Optionally, TCP port 443 can be used instead.

By default, the Elluminate client only attempts to connect to the server on TCP ports 2187 and 80. If you have problems connecting to our server with the default configuration, please refer to the following two FAQ entries.

If you are behind a firewall that is blocking outbound connections on TCP port 2187, you have two options.

Option 1: Our Elluminate server isalso listening for connections on TCP port 443. This is the port that is normally used for HTTPS (SSL-secured HTTP web traffic).

If you are trying to connect to one of our Elluminate sessions and theconnection is failing, click on 'Tools -> Preferences', then click'General -> Proxy Configuration' and select 'HTTP Direct' as theconnection method.

Now click on 'Session -> Join Class...'. Your client will now tryconnecting to our server on TCP port 2187, TCP port 80 and TCP port 443.

If you still can't connect, or can connect, but keep gettingdisconnected every minute or so, you may be behind a web proxy server.Please review the information below in this case.

Option 2: Contact your organization's IT security folks and ask them to modify the firewall policy so your computer can connect directly toour server. See the information above for the necessary port and IP address.

If there is a valid business need to connect to a specific address/port, most organizations are willing to modify firewall policies.

If you are trying to connect to one of our Elluminate sessions and theconnection is failing, or you are able to connect but keep gettingdisconnected every minute or so, then in the Elluminate window, click on 'Tools -> Preferences' on a Windows system or on 'Elluminate Live!->Preferences' on a Mac system, then click 'General -> Proxy Configuration' and select 'HTTP(S) proxy server' as the connection method. Then replacethe Server and Port information with the IP address and port of yourorganization's web proxy server.

Now click on 'Session -> Join Class...'. Your client will now try connecting to your proxy server and passing on a request to connect toour server on TCP port 443.

If you still can't connect, your organization appears to be using a proxy server that does not like longtime connections that are beingmaintained by your machine connecting to our Elluminate server.In this case, you will need to follow the option above and get your organization to modify their firewall policy.

Login to your SANS Account Dashboard at https://www.sans.org/account. Click on 'SANS vLive!' and then click on the link for your SANS vLive! class. On this page there is a link list of Sessions. The current Session link will be available one hour before class begins and will be labeled "Live Session."

Click on the "Live Session" link then click OK in the Java Web Start pop-up. Your Course Meeting will download and open.

Login to your SANS Account Dashboard at https://www.sans.org/account. Click on 'Self Study Files' and then click on the link for your SANS vLive! class. On this page there is a link list of Course Sessions.

Once you have found the recording, click on the link then select "Open With" then click OK for the Java Web Start program. Your Course Recording will download and open.

NOTE: Do not save the .jnlp file. You must open the session while connected to the internet to view.

Login to your SANS Account Dashboard at https://www.sans.org/account. Click on 'Self Study Files' and then click on the link for your SANS vLive! class. At the bottom of this page under the "Evaluation Forms" section there is a link that will take you to the class evaluation page.

The most current session will be selected for evaluation by default. You can evaluate a specific session by select it from the "Date of the Webcast" drop-down.

Login to your SANS Account Dashboard. On the left side of the screen, click on the 'SANS vLive! link. Click on the link for the webcast archive in which you are interested.

If you are not currently logged into the SANS Account, you will be prompted to enter your email address and password. Do so and then click the 'click here to register' link.

If you are currently logged into the SANS Account Dashboard, the page will indicate this is the case. Simply click the 'click here to register' link.

There will be a link to the webcast recording. Click on the 'Webcast Archive - Click Here' link to connect to the Elluminate recording.

Go to http://www.sans.org. In the 'Next webcast:' box, click the 'click here' link.

If you are not currently logged into the SANS Portal, you will be prompted to enter your portal email address and password. Do so and then click the 'click here to register' link.

If you are currently logged into the SANS Portal, the page will indicate this is the case. Simply click the 'click here to register' link.

If it is more than one hour to the start of the webcast, there will be link for a test session. You can use this Elluminate session to validate that your computer has the required Java software and the required network access to connect to our server. Click on the 'Webcast Test Room - Please Check Your System' link to test your access. After doing so, you will either need to refresh the page, or come back to this page within one hour of the webcast start to find the link to the live session.

If it is less that one hour before the start of the webcast, or it is during the webcast, there will be a link to the live webcast session. Click on the 'Live Webcast - Click Here!' link to join the Elluminate session.

If there are network delays, either on your end or on the instructor's end, Elluminate will buffer the audio stream until the connection isre-established and then sends it out to you at an accelerated pace sothat you can "catch up" to realtime.

As a result of the speedup process, the instructor's voice sounds like a higher pitch.

You may be experiencing network congestion or delays on your end or the instructor may be experiencing network congestion or delays on their end. We have indicators in the Elluminate room for each participant that tell us who is experiencing any delays.

If just one or two students are having audio delays, which is a strong indication that the problem is on the student's end.

If all of the students are having audio delays, which is a strong indication that the problem is on the instructor's end.

If all of the students have audio and whiteboard delays, and a significant portion of the students keep getting disconnected from the room, that would be a strong indication that the problem is on our end where the server is located.

The SANS vLive! technical support person in the room will be contacting students they see having delays to let them know that we are aware of it and to help troubleshoot the issue if possible.

If the delays make listening to the live class too difficult for you, each class is recorded and the recordings are normally available within 2 hours from the end of the class.

If network problems on the instructor's end or on our end interfere with the class significantly, we will cancel class and schedule a makeup session when it can be run normally.

You probably have a firewall blocking your outbound attempts to connectto our server. Please review the above information.

You are probably behind a firewall that is blocking your attempt toconnect directly to our server and are trying to connect by using yourproxy server. Some proxy servers do not like long-lived connectionsand will disconnect them after a certain interval. Please review theinformation above.

Your Java application cache on your computer may have gotten corrupted. So far, we have only seen this occur on Windows systems. On a Windowsbox, open the Control Panel and start the Java applet. On the Generaltab, click 'Delete Files...'. On the next window, leave all threeoptions selected and click 'OK'. Click 'OK' on the Java applet window.

Now connect to our Elluminate server again. Your computer will re-download the 6.3MB of Java code files from our server need to buildthe Elluminate classroom.

Check the version of Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that you are running. If you have 1.3.x or 1.4.x, please refer to section 2.3 of the FAQ. You need to update to version 5.x.