PCA Forums

Ok so my sister is moving into collage in a week and i found out there is only wired in the dorms but she wants wire less i have a extra d link i want to know if it is possible to do this do i just need to turn of the dhcp server? and it will work fine?

First of all she needs to read the Internet policy for the university. There should be something they gave her about this.

For security reasons and to satisfy the MPAA and RIAA most universities now lock the network port in your dorm room to the MAC address of your computer to prevent anyone else but you from using it (and you can bet your ass that anything you do on that port is logged in case of a legal dispute). Connecting any device other than your computer (including a router) is usually against the rules.

That said, people DO still use wireless routers. The trick is that if the port is locked to her computer's MAC address you need to use the MAC address cloning feature in the router so that the router can pretend to be the computer, otherwise the router will not be able to get access to the network.

As far as the connection, you want to leave DHCP on and use the router as a NAT router (it's normal mode). Connect the wall jack to the WAN jack on the router. The only thing you have to worry about is not having an IP address conflict. You don't want the router to use the same sub network address as the WAN side. This is usually not a problem - most universities actually give you a static IP right on the Internet and not on a LAN. Just to be safe though I would program the router to use an unusual IP address for the LAN side like 192.168.123.1.

I would also HIGHLY recommend that she use wireless encryption so no one else can use her Wifi. If one of her neighbors mooches her Wifi she might get blamed for something someone else downloaded.

This is pretty serious nowadays - violating Internet policy can be grounds for expulsion.

Hope this helps...

well now that i know that thanks so much i will make sure to turn the wireless radio off too and clone the mac address thanks so much
and will her roomie be able to connect her computer to it? she has a mac but i don't know if that have all that legal issues because the dorms are actually apartment and in there apartment there was like 5 or so wall jacks

The university will only see the MAC addy of the router when using the cloning feature FP discussed. Since DHCP will be enabled, then yes the macintosh will be able to connect and use the wireless. WPA encryption would be the way to go as well.

Is there only one jack in the room? I would think if there's two students in there each would have their own jack.

Please note, if the roommate is using the wireless router with their computer, anything the person does will come down on your sister and not the roommate.

FlyingPenguin wrote:Is there only one jack in the room? I would think if there's two students in there each would have their own jack.

there is one jack in each room but there is like 3 in the living room and one in the kitchen

Dude Tech is easy ... If she is going there. the Most you should have to do is clone her mac address. Dunno if you remember Chonge from the LANs but that boy rigged up a case with random HD lights and crap and stashed his beer in it.

If they both have laptops then I'd setup the Wif. It's going to be more convenient.

The only issues are going to be using an IP range on the LAN side of the router that is different from the one being assigned on the WAN side (but I'm 99% sure it'll be a public IP so that won't be a problem) and use WPA2 and a strong encryption key.

As stated you may have to use MAC Address Cloning since the jacks are probably assigned to work only with the MAC address of the tenants of that room.

Chances are if you do a google search on the news groups you'll find out whether they lock the MAC address and whether they use public IPs or not.

KITCHEN and LIVINGROOM?!!! Nice dorm.