No routers in a college dorm room?

[ckeck]

I work for one of the networking departments at my college (the one that actually deals with students) and we always have to stress that students can not set up routers in their rooms. From what I've been told, a router can mess with how the switches work and in previous years have been known to knock the internet out on floors and even entire dorms. Also there is a liability risk. The school has a closed network that should only be accessed by people with the proper access (students, faculty, staff). If personal routers are set up, then that closed network is compromised and anyone can access it. Obviously the school does not want that to happen so to make the IT's work easier, all forms of routers are banned.

Sorry to sound like the bad guy, but you actually stop and think of all the problems that can arise from routers you can see why they are now allowed.

A router can mess with how the switches work...lol...thats the dumbest thing I've ever heard

 

[ckeck]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, too lazy to read 3 pages of posts. Anyways, my college had the same rule, because routers on the network would start handing out their own (192.168.xxx.xxx, etc) IPs to other computers on the network and it became a huge mess and usually took down a good portion of the dorm's network until IT found the guy responsible and shut off his ethernet port. What I did, was disable DHCP on the router, so it just acted like a switch. Any computer that connected to it either via wired or wireless connection was given a campus IP as if the computer was plugged directly into the ethernet port in the dorm rooms.

Good idea/workaround

 

[vand0576]

I started this thread; here's the promised update.

My daughter Vicki's university--the University of Maryland at College Park--provides wireless networking most everywhere...EXCEPT in the dorm rooms. I had brought along a couple CAT5e cables, but both RJ45 jacks were located on the opposite wall from Vicki's desk. I would need a 20-foot cable if the cable would be buried under the throw rug or a 35-foot cable if she preferred to snake it along the walls so no one would step on it. I had to return the next day with the 50-footer from my home PC. I'll bet that hundreds of students were as unprepared as I was. Note to university: Please inform incoming students that they might want to bring a long run of Ethernet cable.

Now for the wireless part: Vicki decided that she wouldn't "need" wireless access. "But what if you wan to cruise or I.M. when you're lying in the top bunk bed?" I asked. "I'll just drag the cable up there; it's plenty long."

Vicki's roommate didn't bring a printer. I pointed out that we could connect our printer to the AirPort Extreme so that both girls could at least print wirelessly. But Vicki and her roommate replied that it would be no big deal to switch the USB cable to the roommate's computer when the roommate needed to print.

In the end, I went home with the AirPort Extreme.

I did put the question of wireless routers to the upperclass student manning at the front desk. He cautioned that "If I.T. finds your wireless router, they'll take away your network access for the rest of th e year." I asked him whether that's enforced; he said he didn't know.

When you live in a dorm without your own private sink, bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, etc... etc... etc... you just learn to cope without things, certain luxuries such as wireless computing. It's just how dorm life is. I should have started out by saying simply that. You worried more about technology then she did, and she very simply and couragousely decided to take the less swift road, with what sounds like very little complaint. In a couple of years when she moves off campus then she can pay her own ISP bill and set up a wireless network without any problem. Junior and Senior year are when you really need that stuff anyway, when classes are tougher and you might have a little more money from jobs, undergraduate research and so on. Vicki will be FINE.

 

[vand0576]

Actually, the daughter sounds entirely reasonable. PaulinMaryland seems to be the one worried about her being inconvenienced.

She's in college now...it's time to let go and let her make her own decisions. If she asks for help, by all means give it to her, but it sounds like you're working awfully hard to convince her that things should be done the way you think they should.

Yes, you said what I should have. Time for the girl to take care of herself.