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Student dorm does not allow wifi routers

I just moved into a student dorm for a semester abroad, and beforehand I emailed them asking whether they had ethernet ports to plug my router into (I use it to connect all my devices, and for WiVRn VR streaming). They confirmed that I could, but now that I’m here the wifi login portal is asking me to accept these terms from the ISP, which forbid plugging in a router. There’s another clause that forbids “Disruptive Devices” entirely, defined as:

“Disruptive Device” means any device that prevents or interferes with our provision of the 4Wireless to other customers (such as a wireless access point such as wireless routers) or any other device used by you in breach of the Acceptable Use Policy;

So what are my options? I don’t think I can use this service without accepting the terms, but also I was told by the student dorm support that I could bring a router, which contradicts this.

EDIT: some additional context:

  • dorm provider is a company separate from my uni (they have an agreement but that’s it)
  • ISP (ask4) is totally separate from dorm provider, and have installed a mesh network that requires an account. On account creation, there are many upsells including one for connecting more than one device. The “free” plan only allows me to sign in on a single device, and I can upgrade to two devices for 15 pounds.
  • ethernet requires login too
  • VR streaming requires a high performance wifi 6 network, which is why I bought this router (Archer C6 from tp-link)
CaptainBasculin ,

You can disable your router’s wireless networking (or hide its SSID if you want to use wireless networking). It won’t be an issue if you use either way. Since your dorm told you that you could use a router; these terms wont matter.

SzethFriendOfNimi ,
@SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world avatar

Note that hiding its SSID won’t turn off the wireless broadcast which would be adding to the “noise” in whatever channel it’s using.

In this case you would want to turn off the wireless itself

qjkxbmwvz ,

My university was pretty zen about this — essentially, “don’t use your own access point/router please. But if you do, please talk to your resident (University employed) student IT rep and they can probably help you set it up correctly.”

lowleveldata ,

It just says you can’t use things that allow you to connect more devices than agreed. Which means nothing without knowing how many devices were allowed to begin with.

mat OP ,
@mat@linux.community avatar

Yeah that’s the thing… the max devices is one, unless I pay a fee (per device I think). This third party that manages the internet offers a bunch of upsells in the account creation for stuff like more devices.

stoly ,

Is this a private or for profit university?

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

probably protecting against the 5g. people might be allergic to it.

Lezcubus ,

So in regards to specifically VR, I’m just going to make the blind assumption that your headset is a quest 2 or something along those lines. For the time being on campus, you might just want to consider running VR through a physical USB-C link cable rather than jumping through so many hoops on the router setup. A decent cable will run you like $20 US or how ever that translates to local. The quality of the connection is generally about the same as wireless, the main drawback is usually a wired link can’t put through enough energy to recharge you headset on top of the data transfer, so your battery will slowly drain over a few hours. There are also link cables that you can additionally plug your charger into so you don’t slowly run out of battery, but I think the build quality on those is often sketchy. Either way something to consider.

twinnie ,

There’s various contractual reasons they may say this but ultimately they probably can’t tell. Those terms and conditions don’t count for anything and can’t be enforced because no reasonable reads them. I’d just go ahead with using your router and wait for somebody to say something (feign ignorance).

7U5K3N ,

I would go wired… get a switch, run an Ethernet cable from the dorm wall to the switch then out from your switch to your PC.

That said the university is probably handling DHCP and dns… You could use a USB WiFi plug to generate a hotspot off your PC. if you wanted to run your own wifi…

But honestly the dorms WiFi with you using a VPN to a major service is probably easier everyday use wise.

Let me just say this… my college lost WiFi connectivity for about 2 months once when I was there.
The only people who had WiFi were the folks connected to the pirate wireless. Because folks were doing the wired device --> hotspot deal with their desktops.

So might not hurt to be prepared.

Also… The dns settings for your device… you should set those. If you use DNS from your university… It lets them control what you can and cannot see on the net.

mat OP ,
@mat@linux.community avatar

Yeah, that’s what I did at my previous dorm (which didn’t have a third party ISP trying to sell stuff to students). I brought that same router to this one because they told me it was fine, but now I’m faced with these T&C I didn’t know about from a third party.

yhvr ,

While you didn’t name names of what app you were using for streaming, I just got into a similar situation with my dorm and what I found worked was using wired ALVR for my streaming. Not wireless, but good, long right-angled USB-C cables don’t cost a fortune. github.com/…/ALVR-wired-setup-(ALVR-over-USB)

stoly ,

It shouldn’t surprise you that major organizations like to protect their infrastructure.

henfredemars , (edited )

One option could be to get one of those 5G modems. It would require you to pay for your own Internet service, but many will then provide an Ethernet connection as an option, meaning you would never have to accept the legal terms presented to you. You could even use Wi-Fi because technically you never agreed to the terms, and practically speaking so many devices generate Wi-Fi networks I think it would be hard to enforce that you don’t produce any networks. Printers, smart watches, IP cameras… Are they really going to wardrive and triangulate the position of wireless devices on a regular basis? A sneaky network named after a printer or hidden SSID combined with ignorance for a TOS you never agreed to would probably slip through the cracks.

They don’t own the spectrum. I’m not sure it’s even legal to mandate that you can’t use Wi-Fi devices as long as you’re not using their network. When I was in university, there were still tons of such devices emitting signals that weren’t connected to the university network despite policy.

moo ,

I think a lot of the suggestions here pretty solid; you can essentially do them all. I ran a similar setup, but it was not double NAT just data capped so I had to toggle my MAC every now and then.

If you do introduce a switch from the wall, you can at least get your gaming devices directly on. You can then run Wifi network off the router for your phone, and WiVRn.

As others have mentioned though these terms are there for security, your WiFi is a risk to the network. If the school is on your side and you are prepared to mitigate that risk by keeping the router updated and choosing strong auth, you could even tune the transmit power and rssi drop off but I have a feeling if they understood you were going to run WiFi and not just a switch they also would have said no.

So this setup could put you at risk of losing internet I guess according to those terms

mat OP ,
@mat@linux.community avatar

Yeah, I get why they do it security-wise (but am mad about the surprise extracting money part, which was not in the dorm contract!). The dorm isn’t from uni (it’s a third party) but they did seem on my side given they said I could indeed bring a router… the ISP is the problem here. I think I will feign ignorance and set the settings as low as they’ll go while still being able to maintain a good connexion to the headset. Maybe hide the SSID too (it has my name on it lol).

FlatFootFox ,
@FlatFootFox@lemmy.world avatar

This is pretty typical for universities. They don’t want the airwaves clogged, doubling up NAT can lead to networking wonkiness, and they don’t want you giving university network access to unauthorized folks with an open AP.

When you say VR streaming, you just mean wireless from your PC to the headset, right? There’s a chance you could do that with an offline wireless router if the VR experiences you’re looking to play are single player.

mat OP ,
@mat@linux.community avatar

Yep, that’s what I mean with VR streaming. The PC connects thru eth to the router, and the headset is connected to the router’s AP via wifi. I get the point about unauthorized access, but I set strong passwords and never share them. I think this clause is more about preventing me from connecting more than one device to the internet, which they want to charge me for if I do. Obviously having my own AP would allow me to easily circumvent that.

Brkdncr ,

Add a wireless AP to your pc and create an adhoc wifi network for your vr to connect to your pc directly.

Benchamoneh ,

PC with 2 NICs would solve this surely? 1 port to the building for Internet, the other to your offline router which connects to your headset wirelessly

bluemellophone ,

Using your own WiFi router also bypasses the wireless security settings to access the school network.

Some resources are only available while on the network (printers, access to library, academic papers, other student hardware). Now imagine a random person in a coffee shop next door had u limited access to these resources via an unmanaged access point.

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