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)
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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.
Is the VR streaming in the Local net (PC to Headset)? Just run the WiFi router without plugging it into the wall. Connect only the pc and the headset.
Also, appart from that, to use more wired devices, maybe use an unmanaged switch. Don’t think that does anything forbidden here.
Robust but complex solution:
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Set up an encrypted VPN at the router level. Any encryption will work, even weak dumb encryption is fine. Any attempts to decrypt it would be mad illegal.
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Turn off your SSID.
It is now functionally impossible to detect anything about the traffic or the Wi-Fi router without some serious or illegal methods.
It is now functionally impossible to detect anything about the traffic or the Wi-Fi router without some serious or illegal methods.
You should really spend some time learning about WiFi signals. Tracking down rogue Access Points is a pretty common thing and having the SSID turned off does fuck all to prevent it. On the easy end, many enterprise wireless network controllers have rogue AP detection built right in and will show you a map of the location of the rogue AP. Harder, but still entirely possible, is running around with a setup just detecting the signal and triangulating it.
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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.
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.
Is this a private or for profit university?
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.”
Name and shame that crappy backwards university.
The uni is not at fault here, the dorm is a separate entity that just happens to have a deal to keep some rooms for exchange students like me. The dorm is from iQ Student Accommodation (who told me I could bring a router), and the ISP they use is ASK4 (whose T&C you are seeing).
It’s perfectly reasonable there’s no shame involved.
The part that isn’t reasonable is the misrepresentation. The Ethernet ports in the dorm aren’t allowed to be used with WiFi routers, contrary to what the student was told beforehand.
The rule might be fine, but not lying about it. If it was just a mistake, the dorm company should still attempt to make it up to the student. This was a deciding factor in choosing this dorm, by the sound of it.
I remember when I was in college running a hackintosh. I was at the end of the hall and had awful Wi-Fi reception, so I just had my desktop emitting Wi-Fi for me and my dorm mate. I pirated some stuff but never seeded. I told my roommate about pirating and whatnot and showed him how to pirate Parks and Recreation. He didn’t turn off seeding. The university banned my MAC address, but luckily I could spoof one and have internet. He had to go to the dean and tell him he was sorry and that he won’t do it again to get my hardware MAC banned so I didn’t have to change it every time I booted up.
The fact that it was so simple for me to get around this ban was hilarious.
From the wording of the other rules below the highlighted one, I can only assume they mean you can’t install a second router that they provide. I mean, it also says you can’t install any “owner-supplied” devices.
None of that is binding because you have no real alternative to accepting those terms. Just click agree then freely ignore everything it said. If they don’t like it, that’s their problem.
I work in university IT so I have some experience here. Some schools are better than others but in general providing IT services for students is like trying to wrangle a herd of starving feral cats who are all in heat.
First of all I have never seen 802.1x implemented (Ethernet authentication) in the wild that wasn’t almost immediately removed. It’s a shitty protocol that’s terrible to debug. I totally get why they restrict APs … my god if every student had one it would be a pain. It would be like standing in a crowded room with everyone shouting and you’re trying to pick out one conversation 20 ft away.
My guess is you’re basically in a situation like my son was at ECU. It’s likely not really a university dorm but closely affiliated hence the reason of a third party. Or the central university IT is abysmal and can’t be bothered. Either way the only reason to use 802.1X is because they think it’s more secure, when in fact it’s way more trouble than it’s worth. You can do the same thing by controlling downstream routing or MAC filtering. The ECU “dorm” did that and it wasn’t much better honestly. You had to go into a website to add your MAC address to get access to the WiFi. Firstly how do you do that when your computer can’t talk to anything. Chicken and egg problem. Secondly for the ones who figured out how to do that using your phone, good luck getting a history major to figure what even what a MAC address was.
My suggestion is don’t bother. If they’ve implemented 802.1x they’re a micromanaged IT and will catch you eventually. I’d also guess they have completely overtaxed their egress traffic and your speeds are abysmal.
On a related note, when you graduate never ever rent from an apt complex that generously process WiFi or Ethernet. It will almost always suck, they will have no one to provide adequate tech support, and they are just using it as another revenue stream.
Sorry I don’t have better advice but if they control the network there isn’t really much you can do.
I was once responsible for a student house (we don’t have dorms in the US sense, this is the closest we have) and I have similar experiences but less extreme. My favourite was when I had forgotten to configure DHCP filtering and someone plugged in a router the wrong way so it started offering DHCP (that didn’t work) to everyone in the building, in a race with our upstream ISP.
I did this a work one time… sorta the same thing. I installed pfsense VM and left the DHCp server on. I killed the network in our office for about 15 minutes.
Also, the times rats got into the networking room and ate random cables. I should add the network was built by volunteer students in the ‘90s.
if you have what support soid in writing then ask student legal (most universities give you free lawyer access, use it) but in general specific advice like this will in court override what the eula says. The person who said you could should of course be fired but that isn’t your problem.
in the us fcc rules say these are unlicensed bands and they cannot make those rules about any radio. However the eula seems to be about wifi use but connecting their network to wifi and that difference is in their favor. If you get your own network connection (how?) You can bring your own wifi but don’t connect theirs.
Woah, that’s really cool. I’ll contact my uni to ask about it and I guess for now use a phone data hotspot and skip on VR.
pretend you didn’t read it and press the button
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).
psst
Hey, kid, don’t tell anyone I told you about this
*Lifts coat
iodine
https://code.kryo.se/iodine
Description: tool for tunneling IPv4 data through a DNS server
This is a piece of software that lets you tunnel IPv4 data through a DNS
server. This can be usable in different situations where internet access is
firewalled, but DNS queries are allowed.Man, I wish I knew this back then. I used Google translate as a proxy. Then that was blocked, so I used babelfish’s built-in translation engine which was touch and go. This would have helped a lot lol
You got the goods! I used an HTTP tunnel when I was in college.
I also like the idea of ptunnel
Ptunnel is an application that allows you to reliably tunnel TCP connections to a remote host using ICMP echo request and reply packets, commonly known as ping requests and replies.
I don’t understand how that can be reliable without being extremely obvious.
Yeah, any off the shelf network intrusion software would probably immediately flag either of those based solely on the amount of traffic.
Well it would be obvious. Any decent network tool would be able to filter traffic on a port or type (ICMP, DNS, etc).
“Wonder why this kid has 2.5Gb of DNS traffic last week? That isn’t normal. Maybe we should go check it out”
The trick to staying hidden is to look like noise. And this would not be noise.
In 2014 when I was in the hospital for a week I got a visit from their IT. Seems like pushing 5 to 10 gig a day through a ssh connection triggered something. Just a gig of ICMP of any variety would trip a alarm.
I love things that can route internet over something that should not be used for that. For example I’m thinking of making same thing over SMS and Veloren/Minecraft (or anyother videogame)'s private chat or something.
Oh, you are going to love this one then if you haven’t seen it before: https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/
Does it work with DoH ?
No, this is specifically for DNS over UDP (Port 53). What you’re looking for is just an HTTPS proxy. There is no difference between a DoH connection and any other HTTPS connection.
Except on my networks all port 53 tcp/udp and port 853 for that matter are forwarded to my dns per firewall rules. I also block all encrypted dns as well as dns over https blocked. Its my dns or nothing. I also have a vpn and proxy blocklist that updates twice a day. PFblockerNG is effective when maintained.
I wonder if you could just use your PC to hotspot when you need to use VR.
