Having a Switch at uni?

Never did reply to this...

I got the switch and it works a charm absolutely no problem at all, mate in another room in my hall asked about it and he has one too now. Not saying it will work for every university, but UoH it works!
 
Some uni's only allow one MAC per port/room - so this generally wouldnt work. I know Uni of Salford used to run CCA and would shut down the port when it detected a BPDU from intelligent switches.

We had to have a dual NIC'd linux box running iptables and ipv4.forward=1 and DHCP server on the room side, to get round it. Wish i had a uni like yours! :)
 
Dist said:
A router on the other hand would work, you could register the MAC address of the WAN port on your router and use that, that way to the Uni it would seem like there is only 1 device connected, regardless of how many devices are actually connected to the router.
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Is there any way that uni IT department can detect this - i.e. a NAT'ed device acting as a gateway to multiple devices?
 
Phrozenpenguin said:
Is there any way that uni IT department can detect this - i.e. a NAT'ed device acting as a gateway to multiple devices?
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There are a few things that would perhaps give it away as being a router rather than an end user device, such as if remote administration was enabled (which means the router would respond to HTTP requests to access the router configuration page), or if a routing protocol was enabled and the router tries to send routing information out of the WAN port, or a CDP (or similar) packet if the router used is a Cisco router.

If you use a high end router then you should know how to configure it to not send out packets that indicate 'Hello! I'm a router', and if you use a home/small office router then for the most part you should be fine.

As PistolPete said though, you are unlikely to be noticed unless they are specifically looking.
 
Phrozenpenguin said:
Is there any way that uni IT department can detect this - i.e. a NAT'ed device acting as a gateway to multiple devices?
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If you look it's very easy to detect, most consumer devices have pretty obvious fingerprints, most places are probably using flow sampling of one kind or another now (the people who make the products are very fond of universities as a case study anyway). That'd be easier still, it makes it very easy to detect NAT'd traffic, we're pushing that out in a few places to get rid of unapproved access points and such...
 
Had firends and family at various universities up and down the country and most at some point have run a router or switch without issue despite having in most cases signed up to a policy that said otherwise.

I don't think a lot of universities actively police these policies and mainly have them in place as something to beat people who abuse the network with and to hide behind for compliance.
 
Thread revival!
I am starting at Kent Uni in September and I was going to take my Laptop and Desktop down with me but having read on their website...
http://www.kent.ac.uk/itservices/sbs/index.html

It seems there is just the one port in the room.

I was thinking of getting a switch or even a router as some have suggested on here. What would people say is the best option?

When I went to my open day I was told that there is wireless everywhere so I was going to just connect my laptop to the wireless and desktop to Ethernet but if I can get both on wired that would be great.
 
Most University network teams are fairly flexible - the networks are set up to limit the amount of damage one person can do to the service for everyone else (DHCP snooping etc), and they make you aware that anything that happens on your port is your problem. Other than that they are pretty hands-off and let you do what you want. One thing they have problems with is people using Wi-Fi routers if they have already installed access points in your particular hall, which is fair enough.

Talk to the networks guys if you're in any doubt, they don't bite. Most of them were students once.
 
We had to setup a linux box that had 2 NIC's.

NIC 1 - went to the university and got a campus LAN lease.
NIC 2 - went to the internal bedroom switch. We had a DHCP server running on NIC 2, and had its default route as NIC 1. Just remember to enable ipv4.ip_forward.

I spoke to our university bod's (granted, 3-4 years ago now) and they said that the campus LAN was configured to shut your switch port down if it detected STP packets - so i'd be careful just plugging anything in, such as cheapo intelligent-switches you got on ebay!
 
Cheers for the replies guys. I think I will wait until I get there and see what they say/I even need one.

Can always grab one later on.

I saw one today on eBay for £11, 5 port gigabit switch. So just got me thinking!
 
Cheers Mason, that's good to know.

I just ordered this one, TRENDnet TEG S50G 5-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit
£11.94 + free delivery. Can't complain really!

I will take it with me, I am doing Comp Sci so will pop in and ask when I get there if its ok. If not, doesn't matter.

Can just hook it up and use it for transferring stuff from PC to Laptop or just take it home and put it in my cupboard for when I need it!
 
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