dorm room nework

H

Hollow4

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 11, 2003
Messages
325
ok so im obviously in college because of the title. i want to setup a dorm room network beccuase i have a desktop, laptop and 2 servers, an xbox, soon to have an xbox 360 and a HTPC. now my school states specifically no dorm lans, but i say f them and im going to do it anyway, they also said no filing sharing and in one month my freshman year over a terrabyte of information went out to the general school network. i need to order parts from the egg in order to get one of the servers back up and running so ordering a new nic isnt a problem. now i have a dell unmanaged 16 port switch and right now its interfacing nicely with my lappy, server, and desktop allowing me inter net acces and the like.

ok heres the question. i want to shield my little home network from the schools prying IT eyes. i have to interface with the schools network through my desktop using xp. they require us to use xp so i cant setup a default linux box to act as my gateway. can i dump a new nic into my desktop and have it interface between the two networks and shield one from the other? how easy is it to configure two? i have never done that before. i really dont want the school at large to have access to the file servers, and i really dont need anything else to have tremendous amounts of speedy access to the net if any at all.

i hope thats enough info, if you need anything else ill post it as i see it.
cheers
 
I'm sure you really don't care but I'll say it anyway. If they catch you breaking the rules, they could remove your internet connection and there wouldn't be a damned thing you could do about it.

They almost did that to me my freshman year. I was sending MANY gigs a day out through my Hotline server. Just about lost my connection but I pleaded ignorance and skated by.
 
colleges are cracking down on that now. if they catch u, that could be the end of ur career at that school. ask the GA tech students that got caught. they are facing jail time.
 
Bridging connections in WinXP is... well, in my experience, ass-tastic.

If MS was willing to follow 802.1D (STP/STA) or had a clue what a BPDU was, things would be much happier in my mind, even if finding the loops in your layer-2 network isn't hard, sometimes redundancy can be a good thing at that layer.

My advice, use a linux gateway, or even a home-broadband-style router. Especially with the linux box, if/when the school IT dweebs get mad at you, talk openly and honestly with them, ask what they need you to change, and most techies are smart enough to know that if you're going to go to that much effort, you can admin your network to their specs, and they don't need to blow a gasket.
 
no they wont do anything as long as i keep it all to myself. my main purpose is i want my music collection off my main rig cuz the harddrives are almost 4 years old and for me thats a long time on a drive. granted one was replaced after 6 months cuz the school network just killed from over working it. but back to the point. i know as long as i dont go serving files to everyone i will be fine. i just need to interface two nics in XP so im not adding ips to thier network, or causing something strange to happen to it. what they dont want is some person to get a WAP and just plug it into the network just so they can have wireless in their room. the point is to protect my small network from the school and adding another nic and having the xp box be my gateway should do that right?? i can always argue with them if i get caught that i was doing it for my media purpose and nothing else. I really doubt they will care if i say so i wanted my HTPC to be able to access the movies and music stored on my server and wanted to keep my xp box running quicker by keeping my harddrives free.
 
striaght from the horses mouth

Unauthorized Services. Users must not run unauthorized servers, including but not limited to DNS, DHCP, email, file sharing, print, video or audio streaming, web, peer-to-peer, or other application services. Such services disrupt and in some cases disable central services. Authorization to run a service may be obtained upon approval from the Director of ITS.
Click to expand...

Network Services. The College provides Internet access through the e-mail system and the World Wide Web. The use of the network is a privilege, which may temporarily be revoked at any time for abusive conduct. Such conduct would include the placing of unlawful information on a system, the use of objectionable language, running unauthorized servers, including but not limited to DNS, DHCP, email, file sharing, print, video or audio streaming, web, peer-to-peer, or other application services, and any other type of use that would cause congestion of the network or otherwise interfere with the work of others. It is a violation of ITS policy to assume the identity of others in e-mail and other network communication. See the Information Technology Services Usage policy in the College Handbook.
Click to expand...

so it looks like if i talk to them and ask nicely and say i promise not to open up my system to the public then i can get premission. i will email the IT guy later today and ask nicely and simply say i dont want to file share anything and i promise to keep it private. also ill tell him im running corporate version of norton, which we use on network.
 
Oh. Are you talking about just having a bunch of computers in your room that are only accessable by your computers? If so, that's an entirely different scenario.

Just buy a router and that's the end of story. They won't be able to tell if you have one or fifty computers. Otherwise put two nics in your main rig. You don't have to bridge the connections for the computer to see both networks.
 
my college was awful last semester network wise. we had 3 people in rooms that were designed and built for only 2 people, so we had 2 ethernet jacks. they provided us with some ghetto 4 port 10base-t hubs ( i guess they figured that they would slow down the filesharing or something). I refused to use that hub because I had the only printer for the 6 of us and we do a fair share of file sharing between us (4 of us are CS majors, so there is alot of linux ISO's etc on my main rig that we all want to try out).

anyways, I basically ended up setting up a little network similar to what you want to do. I setup an old 233mhz P2 as a smoothwall that connected directly to the wall jack, then I plugged the output from the smooth wall into my 32 port 10/100 switch, which then went to the 6 computers, one server, 2 modded Xboxes and a PS2. The setup was easy and I never got questioned/caught for doing it. It was nice because we could limit / unlimit the filesharing to just our room with a few settings. what we usually did was open it up on the weekends when the IT guys were not around, then close it up again on sunday nights.

on the other hand one of my other friends thought it would be a good idea to just plug a linksys wired router into his wall jack then plug his stuff into that, and he got caught some how.
 
ok that should work, i already have a 16 port swirch so i really dont want to add a router to the configuration, so i will just to that. thats why i was saying i dont think it will be that big of a deal.

but assuming sometime down the road i wish to bridge my connection, any place where i could look online to get some info on that would be greatly appreciated. i wouldnt want the G/F to bring her laptop over and not be able to use it.

cheers
 
Do you have to register your MAC with your campus IT Department or do you have to Log in to a web interface or something like like a Cisco or Netgear agent?

If its the first, your best bet is a router, Simply register the mac of the router with your IT dept. I just picked up a replacement to my WRT54G Wireless G router for $39 after rebates. Your going to play heck trying to XP to act like a good router. You may not like it, but a router is simply easier and works better.

If its the later, then your in a bit of a pickle. Depending on the configuration of the network a router may still work, you just have to be careful not to log into too many computers at once. Some departments only allow one connection, some allow 2 for a desktop and a laptop. You would also have to make sure that your router has the correct ports open.

Speaking on behalf of campus IT Departments out there (Going into my 4th year of being a ResNet Computer Consultant here at KSU), Were not out there trying to screw our users over. We walk a razor blade, on one side we have the administration telling us we need a rock solid secure network, and on the other we have students pushing for more access and better stuff. Please understand the restrictions are there for reasons of stability and access for everyone. Trust me, its no fun having a pager go off at 4AM and having to go reset switches since someones computer got infected with some virus thats flooding the network. Its also no fun working 60-70 hour weeks due to virus outbreaks :D


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well we dont have a login feature to use the net. they simply turn on or off your port depending a few things. 1) if you are "certified" by their standards, xp pro, norton which they install and you cannot, and a couple other minor things. 2) the volume of traffic that you have going through your port 3) if you are running p2p networks they will kill your port.

as i read in one of the things, the network at my school is not for anything but academic work. no gaming of any sort will be tollerated on the network, no network filesharing, no xbox's, ps2's or any console hooked up at all. I understand protection and security, plus i understand covering you ass, but they just upgraded, i think, to two T3's for a campus of not even 1600. we have soooo much power and no way to full use it. its bugs me though the things i cant do. i was play diablo 2 like two years ago, decent speeds, all of a sudden i got an email saying that i was not to do that anymore, and wouldnt you know they turned the ports off. i mean thats just ultraconservative. i will not attach a router directly to ethernet port, i refuse to take that type of risk because they specifically state somewhere that routers cannot be hooked directly into the network, now though, i will put it through another box and let that be my gateway. i have a couple of nics on order so i guess ill just try and see what i can come up with on the bridging of the network connection. and if that doesnt work. i guess the network really doesnt need to be connected to the internet at large and i can use my xp box as an intermediary.
 
at your schol do they porvide you with cable TV or do you have to sign up for it on your own.

at my school we have to sign up and pay for our own cable from a local provider. a few rooms got completly fed-up with the schools network and signed up for charter high speed internet for $20 a month for the first 6 months (some promotion or something). Charter had no problem setting it up because it was more money for them and from what i heard it worked pretty good.

I am guessing that if the IT guys found out about it they would be quite mad, but how would they really find out unless they searched the room and saw the cable modem?
 
i thought about doing that, except that they provide the cable sooooooooooooo thats most likely a no go

anyway ill figure it out like i always do. cheers guys
 
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