College internet?

Decker87

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Messages
415
Hi. I'm going to be going to college next year, and I wonder what sort of restrictions colleges typically put on their in-dorm internet access? Do they block certain ports or anything? I want full control.
 
Decker87 said:
Hi. I'm going to be going to college next year, and I wonder what sort of restrictions colleges typically put on their in-dorm internet access? Do they block certain ports or anything? I want full control.

Dependomg on the college, the network set, and the administration and facualty rules, it varies. For the most part, for security, money, spam, virus ect..ect.. reasons they lock students down pretty tight. No P2P, bittorrent, gaming, servers and the usual are locked out. And no, you cannot get around that. No you cannot ask here HOW to get around. That will earn a closed thread and possible temp ban.

If you want control of your network, don't live on campus.
 
Good luck with having full control.

If it is any consolation, some schools have internal P2P networks.
 
I lived on campus for two years, and basically what I saw was this. If you expect full control, that's a pipe dream since you're not the only one on the network.

- no internet P2P apps - they keep adding more to the list of blocked P2P services. P2P traffic can seriously hinder network performance, among other things. You'll have to look at your school's TOS and AUP as well as the network operations site to see what it is you can and can't do.
- we're allowed to run web servers, we can also game. I was big into MOH:AA, CS, and such when I was a freshman and sophomore.
- using a lot of bandwidth got your port shut off for some period of time. I never knew what 'a lot' meant.
- do not run commercial ventures off the school network
- can't run stuff like DHCP servers, routers, wi-fi access points

If you don't want to be subject to such rules, you could try to get a separate net connection in your dorm room (via DSL or cable)
 
BillLeeLee said:
I lived on campus for two years, and basically what I saw was this. If you expect full control, that's a pipe dream since you're not the only one on the network.


If you don't want to be subject to such rules, you could try to get a separate net connection in your dorm room (via DSL or cable)

Or do what I did, stay at folks house saved money AND had my way of things
:D
 
Wow, this sucks. I jsut hope I don't have to stop breathing when I'm using too much oxygen.
 
Some schools are more leniant about access. Call up the tech department if you are really concerned about it.
 
I'm a sophomore at Penn State (main campus).

Bandwidth restriction: 1.5 gigabytes down, 1.5 gigabytes up (per week). It's enforced by an actual counter that you can check the status of at anytime. If you go over it, you're reduced to a 56kbps connection until the counter resets at 12am every Sunday. If you violate it 3 times, your connection is terminated for the rest of the semester. No exceptions.

According to ShieldsUp, every port is stealth; so don't expect to host any servers. The connection is shared among all campuses (82,000+ students as well as faculty). Usually, it's slow in terms of both bandwidth and latency. Also, if I ever play UT (very rare due to my workload), I average about 10-20% packet loss.

The only thing they are graceful about is Napster downloads - they won't count against your weekly bandwidth, no matter how much you decide to download.

Forget about your high speed cable/DSL service - welcome to college. Oh, and move into an apartment/townhouse when you can - I'm doing it next year. 2,000 sq. ft. as opposed to < 400.
 
Decker87 said:
I want full control.

...

Wow, this sucks. I jsut hope I don't have to stop breathing when I'm using too much oxygen.


ROFL!

Now on a serious side, what makes you think the school does not have a right to keep its network in somewhat of a functional state? If things remain unchecked, if they gave students this so called "full control"...hell...it'd only take a handful of greedy students a matter of days to bring down the entire network! It doesn't matter how fat the pipes are, "give an inch, take a mile".

Most school IT have gotten around to doing various measures from letting things get out of control. Various QoS/packet shaping, blocking of bad ports, throttling students and buildings, etc.
 
Well at the College I work at heres what we do:

We have Packeteer to help shape traffic - and keep certain apps to minimal traffic; i.e., games, P2P, BitTorrent, itunes - pretty much whatever we want. So how we have it setup, it'll take you a while to download an album, let alone a song.

We do monitor the traffic daily - and will shut certain rooms off for excessive traffic - they must then come in and get their computer "certified" by a tech (make sure theres no virus, spywayre, etc). Only then will we turn the room back on. If we see you with excessive traffic on wireless - we'll lockout your MAC address.

We tell students not to have routers. But if you set it up right - we dont really care, as long as you arent set up for DHCP and don't broadcast your SSID.

That's pretty much all we do - other than that the students can do pretty much whatever. We don't block sites or pages from them, we dont block many ports (unless we he hear of a certain port being used for virus activity).
 
Decker87 said:
Wow, this sucks. I jsut hope I don't have to stop breathing when I'm using too much oxygen.
:rolleyes:

Students are so funny. They think they're entitled to everything they want.

As a network administrator, I can tell you that p2p applications have zero legitimate use and absolutely cripple network traffic. In a building of 150 tenants, just two using bittorrent to download games and movies will quickly kill everyone else's bandwidth and latency.

Don't cry if you can't use your college's network to download the latest copy of Photoshop and Episode III as if your rights were being taken away.
 
kumquat said:
:rolleyes:

Students are so funny. They think they're entitled to everything they want.
It's when they protest their supposed rights that it really gets me chuckling. Local college kids did that a few years back, made the papers. Wasn't quite the coverage they were after ( they were protesting rent/food costs on campus ), the papers essentially mocked them for not running the math.

It was beautiful.
As a network administrator, I can tell you that p2p applications have zero legitimate use
Any blanket statement is usually considered false. bittorrent is perfectly legitimate. I get my linux ISOs using it all the time.

Has no place in a college network, I'll agree.
Don't cry if you can't use your college's network to download the latest copy of Photoshop and Episode III as if your rights were being taken away.
Yup. If you don't like the control the college has, get a place off campus. Even then, don't be surprised if the ISP blocks your ability to commit crimes
 
It can also sometimes put your school in a sticky legal situation if you are downloading/sharing unauthorized copyrighted material. Your school should have an acceptable use policy somewhere on their IT site; check that to see what all you can and can't do. Essentially, though, academic uses have priority over everything else(it is a school, after all :p). If you want full control, live off campus. Though you then have to play by your ISP's rules.
 
XOR != OR said:
Any blanket statement is usually considered false. bittorrent is perfectly legitimate. I get my linux ISOs using it all the time.
You're correct, of course. I did exaggerate a bit, but I hadn't had my morning coffee.

You'll probably agree that over 99% of college campus p2p traffic is for MP3's, games, and programs, though.
 
Come on guys, let's give all the freshmen full control... ;)

Why there may be some limitations on a campus' Internet connection, I've never had a better overall connection in my life. They are not nearly as severely restricted as say... the corporate connections of similar bandwidth.

Shoot, web pages will be loaded before you even request them ;)
 
Mine

- has upload speeds capped at 75 kbps, IIRC
- has most p2p's blocked
- wireless internet in all buildings but dorms
- locks your port in your dorm room to your mac address

Since they lock your port to your mac address, you cannot switch NICs without calling them and having them reconfigure your port. The way to save yourself some time is to hook up a router inline, so you can use as many network items (xbox, laptop, pc, etc.) as your router will do... and all the resnet will see is the one mac address. They allow the use of routers, but don't 'officially support' them, so if you ever have trouble when you're using a router, you fix it yourself.
 
we can't get on irc, and our school is very strict about any p2p or bittorent or whatnot. They have automatic shut off for each jack in each one of the 7,000 freshmans desk on campus if you use to much bandwith or have a virus. Browsing is fine..playing games is fine, i know better then to download on campus, i go to a friends house off campus with a 4gig flash drive and get whatever i need. Also, its not like our down is that fast anyways, its 100-200 Kb/sec down, but upload is close to 1,000 (limited also). If people want to download...live off campus, we can't our freshman year, and our school was one targeted by the riaa a year or two ago, and yes, our school turned over all details about file transfer and what was downloaded to them.
 
I don't know if UNI has any bandwidth restrictions, but I do know you can't run any listening servers. They don't NAT the connection, but simply drop any incoming TCP connections. They do block P2P from what I hear (I have never actually lived on campus) but IRC is fine, we have some of the ITS people sitting in #cedarlug.

As for wanting full control, never expect full control unless your wanting to spend the money getting the leased line and the hardware to use it. To many stupid people out there to let them do what ever they want without restriction.
 
I'm with you all on blocking most of everything, as a network admin I fully understand the give a little they take everything sort of thing that always happens... BUT

we all went to college , some of us paid $20,000 per year for it, some more some less... what did you get for this? education, sure, but probably a tiny dorm room, smelly roommate, retarded neighbors etc... IMHO there are better solutions

just some ideas:

1) transfer limits, assign limits per room , per port , it's not that hard and is doable , you go over and too bad so sad go to the library until next month or beg the roommate to share his port with you if he's willing.

2) don't block P2P because it has illegal content in it, how about you just log traffic, make users sign agreements that they are liable for any content downloaded and wait for a lawsuit, then assist RIAA/police/BSA/whoever with finding out who it was, IMHO network isn't responsible for what its network users do. Guns don't kill people... that sort of thing

3) most campus locations could be setup to allow private cable/dsl pipes in, but they don't. Why not treat rooms as "apartments" that you can get any service you want into??? Heck, there could even be some extra $$$ in it for them if they struck a deal with local cable internet company and it offloads dorms from their LAN

my school network was so locked down it became useless and I moved off campus :shrug: I suggest you do the same

I just think it could be done better
 
My uni's got it right I think. P2P is pwned by packet sniffing Ciscos, but pretty much everything else is allowed. (Though for some reason, my mail is owned by the firewall...have to use webmail gmail to send stuff...POP works fine though). Gaming, browsing, etc. No VoIP and stuff though, since most UDP traffic is nerfed IIRC. Biggest pain here are fools who hook up routers/WAPs with their DHCP servers still on and stuff. Big headaches.
 
My campus was setup where almost everything worked, P2P would work it would just take you a week to get even 100mb. Gaming was fine and the only time your port was shut off was because you had a virus.

If you wanted to pay $5 for 3 months worth of external IP you could, so then you could host whatever you wanted.

Yes, my college got calls from Paramount etc about piracy and that person was cut off until they deleted the file(s) and then could come back online, just watched a little closer.

Just depends on the college, the IT staff and how much of annoyance they want to deal with.
 
zrac said:
3) most campus locations could be setup to allow private cable/dsl pipes in, but they don't. Why not treat rooms as "apartments" that you can get any service you want into??? Heck, there could even be some extra $$$ in it for them if they struck a deal with local cable internet company and it offloads dorms from their LAN
You can at UNI, although the cable provider is choosen for you I know a few students who got that installed.
 
Xipher said:
I don't know if UNI has any bandwidth restrictions, but I do know you can't run any listening servers. They don't NAT the connection, but simply drop any incoming TCP connections. They do block P2P from what I hear (I have never actually lived on campus) but IRC is fine, we have some of the ITS people sitting in #cedarlug.

As for wanting full control, never expect full control unless your wanting to spend the money getting the leased line and the hardware to use it. To many stupid people out there to let them do what ever they want without restriction.

Well sitting here on Campus at UNI I can say there is no bandwidth limit and P2P will work but they tend to be slow so its not worth it. I have no complants on the Network here I tend to download as fast as the sites can send it to me. ( I download a lot of game demos to poor to by them). I got Vista RC-1 the other day at about a Meg/s. The only thing I dont like is the registering by mac address so you have to reregister if you switch comps or nics. That got really annoying last year before I got my Router. I would be with out internet for about 2 days if I wanted to upgrade or patch my Linux box. I wish I could host a game server but oh well. My friend down to ISU can so its all good.
 
DeChache said:
Well sitting here on Campus at UNI I can say there is no bandwidth limit and P2P will work but they tend to be slow so its not worth it. I have no complants on the Network here I tend to download as fast as the sites can send it to me. ( I download a lot of game demos to poor to by them). I got Vista RC-1 the other day at about a Meg/s. The only thing I dont like is the registering by mac address so you have to reregister if you switch comps or nics. That got really annoying last year before I got my Router. I would be with out internet for about 2 days if I wanted to upgrade or patch my Linux box. I wish I could host a game server but oh well. My friend down to ISU can so its all good.
Yea, don't know why they still have the MAC registration, I think that's hung around from the big virus attack way back when. Lucky for you UNI has a direct link to ISU :) (for Internet2 specificly) and since you mentioned Linux, we are having a CedarLUG Installathon on the 23rd in ITTC 322.
 
here at Toledo, we are pretty limited. We have this service called Ruckus where you can download movies/music legally but you can only play/watch on your computer. You can't put them on an ipod/mp3 player.
They also say we can't have routers/switches.

-Jeff
 
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