university network abuse :o

[vuz]

hi people, a long time since i posted on this board, but got a question for you lovely techies :)

my new student house happens to be rather close to the university, and indeed the sole housemate residing at the house over the summer has been using then uni network which has turned out to be unreliable (possibly due to v **** £20 usb connection with no antennae), but pretty damn fast.

having previously had completely wired networks in my houses, i have an 8 port netgear switch - what i really want to know is:
- is there a piece of hardware that can connect to the university network and then connect to the switch without having a server PC? if so, recommendations?
- currently data packets sent between the house and the uni are totally unencrypted - is this going to be a big security problem? can it be sorted?

cheers v much,

PaddyMann (vuz)

[JeRkY]

im not the know it all i sometimes like to think i am, but i believe you could setup a bridge between to wireless access points, 1 into your hub one into the uni network.

im really suprised your uni network isnt better protected mind

[KingDaveRa]

I too am somewhat amazed this university has no security.

Probably a good idea not to let on which uni, as I work for a uni myself, and as a Security person... well, you know.

Then again, does it use some sort of authentication gateway? If so, fair play. I'd be surprised if there's an open access point though.

[WhiteKnight]

If that uni is anything like the local one here, its protected by mac address filtering on the APs and the routers.. you can get around this, however, by buying a wireless router and rigging it up in reverse, and supplying the UNI with the mac address of this new router.

Normally, you`d have the ethernet connection on your internet side and the wifi on the local side, but you can (on some routers) rig them up so the wireless is the "dirty" internet side, and the ethernet is the "clean" network side. you then just make the router NAT your connection so there is effectivly only one "pc" connected to the UNI network.

I will say that most of the cheap "soho" routers dont let you do this... altho i think one of the linksys ones will. You`d have to look into that.

[vuz]

yeah, i guess i'd be looking to do one of these 'dirty' concepts.

the uni doesn't use authentications (its an open network) - for some reason they think this is the way forward. as i say my mate is already using it at the house :o

[Mouce]

Its the way forward to a big bill on a nice internet connection, which uni was this again? I might come down to see the sites :D and take down a couple of gigs...