Alternative to College Dorm Internet

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Furystrike

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 6, 2004
Messages
1,535
Hey guys, not sure if this is the right place or not...but

I'm stuck at a college where they give you really BS internet service. Its pretty sweet late at night where I can get around a meg a second download, but if I download too much they'll shut me off permanently (already got the first warning for downloading HL2). Worse is the terrible ping I get during prime usage hours from 3-midnight or so, which is the time slot I'll game in. On top of all of this they charge us $40 a month PER person on top of a huge tuition, so im just not a happy camper. What are my options? I'm thining cable is probably out of the question, although we do have cable lines running into the rooms...I dont know if a provider owns them however or if its through the university. We also have telephone lines, which seems like a better option if I could get DSL. Would this be possible? I'm also considering trying wireless internet, so any feedback on that would be helpful.

Thanks in Advance
 
Make nice nice with the IT department. Land yourself a job writing out work tickets or being an op or something. Gain friends on the inside who control the routers. Enjoy the benefits of uncapped internet use.

r00k @ Marquette University
 
r00k said:
Make nice nice with the IT department. Land yourself a job writing out work tickets or being an op or something. Gain friends on the inside who control the routers. Enjoy the benefits of uncapped internet use.

r00k @ Marquette University
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That’s all well and good if you can do it. Chances are it won’t happen, especially if it’s a bigger school. Here at KSU, ResNet has to deal with Network Services, they control the speed and are very tight with it. Even our Admin vlan is shaped.

As for the original question: Your most likely stuck, but call up your local phone and cable company anyway. Here at KSU, DSL has no chance due to the structure of our phone system, its all NEC digital equipment. AS for the cable side: Usually the cable network of a campus isn’t designed for digital stuff. Remember most dorms are built by the lowest bidder :) But call anyway; see what they have to say.

Best suggestion: get a few of your friends and find an apartment or house off campus and rent. It’s so much cheaper and nice
 
Yup, when I went to the U of Washington, you had one option for your internet provider - the U. Luckily, at that point, we were uncapped, and UW is or once was a major hub for the internet for the NW. We were limited only by the speed of the site we were connected to, and any problems on the internet segments our traffic traversed.
 
how do you think they shut off your connection? if its by mac then you can spoof your mac address then when it gets banned just use a different one. also, if theres someone you dont like you can use their mac to download your stuff till you (they) get banned :D
 
When your at a university, your at the mercy of their rules and regulations for their network. Our Uni will shut down your service if you so much as install any kind of P2P software on your computer.
 
if you pay for it how can they disable it for you? thats really messed up :(
 
Bugalaman said:
if you pay for it how can they disable it for you? thats really messed up :(
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it is messed up, some schools are even worse than this. my first semester of my first year at my college they had content filtering on our internet connection. its gotten better since then but they still block most ports.
 
Bugalaman said:
if you pay for it how can they disable it for you? thats really messed up :(
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Easy - they own it.

I'll bet even your ISP blocks some stuff and you pay them too. Outgoing ports such as 80 or 21 most likely. You can either use it or not, they don't care.
 
I was a paying customer for America Offline and they used to cancel my account almost every month.

then cable spoiled me. :-D
 
acascianelli said:
how do you think they shut off your connection? if its by mac then you can spoof your mac address then when it gets banned just use a different one. also, if theres someone you dont like you can use their mac to download your stuff till you (they) get banned :D
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Most likely they'd physically unhook your connection from the switch, MAC spoofing can't get around that.
 
tom61 said:
Most likely they'd physically unhook your connection from the switch, MAC spoofing can't get around that.
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he wouldnt need to learn more about his college network in order to determine that. i dont think that is the case. they probobly dont have intelegent enough switches to show exactly which port is him. they can probobly narrow him down to a specific subnet but they probobly cannot pinpoint his exact location. thats the best case scenario. worst case they can find out exactly where you are on campus, and can deactivate the port on the switch remotely.

id like to know more information on how the network is setup.
 
acascianelli said:
they probobly dont have intelegent enough switches to show exactly which port is him. they can probobly narrow him down to a specific subnet but they probobly cannot pinpoint his exact location. thats the best case scenario. worst case they can find out exactly where you are on campus, and can deactivate the port on the switch remotely.
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You may be right, but I would hope, and I do think you are wrong. If it is a campus of any decent size, they should have the hardware to be able to trace him right down to his switchport. I do it at work almost every day.
Also, if they have had the foresight to do any documentation, they should know the exact switchport that services each dorm room.
 
my first post was more of a joke.

actually what happens is that most switches are managed, and routers are set up with filters. We use Cisco routers here at MU, and they automatically shut off the specific port / jack if certain hardware settings are detected (this is virtually instant when you bridge your network adapters, when you use a switch (because it allows multiple mac addresses on one line), or if a poorly set up router is detected on your port). They can also shut your port down remotely if their monitors suggest that you have too much spam / viral garbage perpetuating from your port, of if they detect you are sharing files against copyright.
 
you might want to check around with the local providers, i know when i lived on campus there was a place that would be able to give service to students in the dorms.. only thing is it was pretty expensive..
 
Wow! Lots of responses, thanks guys.

I'm pretty sure that they shut me off via my Mac address. I hadnt even thought about spoofing someone elses. (maybe my network admin's;) ) In fact that, that is what my roomate is doing right now so we can share the internet (we have my CPU's mac entered into the router).

If you violate TOS. Same with any other provider.
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Yeah, they got me on this clause right here: "And or any other activity which can be deemed harmful to the university." Thats pretty broad huh? Then I had to go down to the the ResTech office to get yelled at for a good 20 minutes by the network administrator. He was dead convinced I was downloading movies off of kazaa, and just rolled his eyes when I told him about half life 2. That made me furious! Oh well, 1 more semester of dorm living then I'll go for the apartment idea.
 
Furystrike said:
we have my CPU's mac entered into the router)
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well thats one of the first problems, always go for the spoofing.

although here (milwaukee school of engineering) i would gander that our problem is only slightly better. we arent capped on bandwidt (t3 for less than 1300 residents) but every port to the outside is blocked. im forced to use bit torrent at (only?) 300-400 k/sec rather than at least 2-3 meg/sec which 'bothers me" some other people at other schools said they could fnd some port open usually, but nothing here. i guess its no ftp, apache or cs server for me
 
Furystrike said:
Yeah, they got me on this clause right here: "And or any other activity which can be deemed harmful to the university." Thats pretty broad huh? Then I had to go down to the the ResTech office to get yelled at for a good 20 minutes by the network administrator. He was dead convinced I was downloading movies off of kazaa, and just rolled his eyes when I told him about half life 2. That made me furious! Oh well, 1 more semester of dorm living then I'll go for the apartment idea.
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Pain in the ass huh? I know it feels. But just remember, Rule are there for a reason. At Kent ResNet is in charge of roughly 6000 student connections. We provide a capped connection of 512 down 64 up (Kbits) and we had to fight tooth and nail for that. Heck, when i lived in the dorms, i was very happy to get 256 down after about 5 months of network issues.
We walk a fine line, A majority of your IS people actually want an open network. We don’t block ports to be asses to our users, we block when we see a threat. However we walk a fine edge razor. On one size we got students wanting more speed and less restrictions, and on the other side we got the higher-ups begging for more security as cheep as possible.
 
r00k said:
my first post was more of a joke.

actually what happens is that most switches are managed, and routers are set up with filters. We use Cisco routers here at MU, and they automatically shut off the specific port / jack if certain hardware settings are detected (this is virtually instant when you bridge your network adapters, when you use a switch (because it allows multiple mac addresses on one line), or if a poorly set up router is detected on your port). They can also shut your port down remotely if their monitors suggest that you have too much spam / viral garbage perpetuating from your port, of if they detect you are sharing files against copyright.
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Ya, what r00k said, most schools with intelligent Net Admins would already have their switches/routers to automatically shut off a port if it exceeds whatever specifications they desire. At least that's what I did at work...
 
My uni used a proxy server for the dorm 'net .. EWW

/me wubs his cable
 
How does a cable provider know to shut you off when you don't pay your bills?
How did the college know to contact him to warn him of the high bandwidth usage?
If someone violates a TOS, they don't put them into a penalty box or timeout corner...chances are it is a physical disconnection...granted, I doubt they still will walk to your local drop and unplug anything, but they will just deny physical traffic.

For something as dynamic and changing as college campuses and residences are, they will have to have a strong correlation between student identities and their network ports, especially if they have limits that they plan to enforce like this, or expectations on service.

Come on guys...heh.

By the way, if you want spoof your MAC or do anything to get around limitations, and you're attending a state school, please be aware that you are doing this on federal property, and thus are answerable to federal laws. Federal laws are not forgiving.

Your best bet may be to get a third-party service. A next step may be to petition your local student government or other persons to see if they can make this $40 network fee waivable if you don't use their services.
 
Rombus said:
We walk a fine line, A majority of your IS people actually want an open network. We don’t block ports to be asses to our users, we block when we see a threat. However we walk a fine edge razor. On one size we got students wanting more speed and less restrictions, and on the other side we got the higher-ups begging for more security as cheep as possible.
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we deal with the same issue here, but the other way around. we have a T3 for a couple thousand users, and it really isnt that fast. TONS of people have their P2P programs open all the time and it hogs all of the bandwidth. our network admin would love to just shut off some ports and the network would be so much better. but, the president of the college wants a completely open campus, "let the users do whatever they want, we will deal with it." but recently, a new kink has been thrown in: the RIAA has sued at least one student on our campus. it has become quite the mess :(
 
Yeah, I'm not exactly for the distribution of illegal music. However, I think its BS that they shut me off for downloading a game I purchased, especially if I pay $40 a month for service! I dont think its right for a customer to be mocked by the network admin for playing video games...
 
@theboohi:

We just got our first RIAA lawsuit too, Campus news paper was all over it. Im real curious to see what comes out of it.

@Furystike:

Unfortunately, paying $40 a month doesn’t give you a right to do whatever you feel is right. Same goes for any ISP. You break the TOS, you loose your connection. There is nothing illegal about running your own website, but many cable internet providers won’t let you do it. Sure, you probably won’t get caught, but it is in the TOS. Chances are you caught your network admin in a bad mood, or he didn’t know much about HL2. We hear excuses all the time, so he probably thought you were just feeding him a line. Best excuse are when we get an copyright report on someone, they will deny it up and down until we show them the report, then they start to fess up. Some get pretty defensive and start spouting off about how we shouldn’t be monitoring there connections. its real hard to convince people otherwise sometimes.
 
nevada reno here, we got access to web, ftp, and incoming ISP mail. outgoing SMTP is blocked. IRC is blocked. BT is blocked. everything else I can think of is blocked as well.
 
Oh man, you purchased hl2 and were downloading what you paid for from steam and the college got upset? Ahaahhahah. More fallout from valve's crazy steam tactics lol.
 
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