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Using a router in the dorms...

E

erikiksaz

Diamond Member
I'm typing this with my laptop, which is unfortunately connected to an ethernet cable.

My friend, however, has decided to hook up his wireless router, even though the university policies have stated that it is forbidden. He's disabled the ssid broadcasting, and something else, I can't remember which setting 😛

Anyways, will the network technicians be able to see that he's set up a router? He's not sharing it with others, he just wanted to keep his laptop wireless.

 
depends on how good they are. Spidey has a true wireless infrastructure, and I bet it would last 3 minutes or less on his network 😛
 
I talked to one of the techs here at my dorm @ uiuc, they say that they can detect routers by examining the TTL values of each packet apparently. If they detect a router, the port to the room is automatically shutoff. Can someone confirm this?

BTW, I've been using ICS for about two weeks now, is the 'method' of routing different than a consumer level router or are they just BSing me?
 
yes you can tell from the ping times how much gear is between you and the end peice.. for that matter run "ping plotter" it will even show you what all is in the loop. it's always neet to see how many things are between you and another site (I use it to check connections to game servers).
 
Yes they can.

Especially if they have wireless in the dorm.

The others APs will "hear" the radio.

But then again we weren't allowed to have alcohol in the dorm room when I was in school. For some reason that never stopped me.

but seriously, that's bad mojo and he should stop. If they are good they can tell its there, wireless or not.
 
Originally posted by: Joony
I talked to one of the techs here at my dorm @ uiuc, they say that they can detect routers by examining the TTL values of each packet apparently. If they detect a router, the port to the room is automatically shutoff. Can someone confirm this?

BTW, I've been using ICS for about two weeks now, is the 'method' of routing different than a consumer level router or are they just BSing me?
Click to expand...

This is exactly one of the methods used to detect the presence of a router. Its a clear give away.
 
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would they ban wireless routers? Or is it all routers? I'm not an anal retentive network admin, so I am at a loss as to why enforcing this would be worth their time, maybe someone could explain this...
 
They don't give a crap at UIUC if you use a router. My friend lived at Allen last year (one of the only normal people in that building) and there were a couple wireless routers we would always steal from when we used our laptops.
 
I'll get somebody to ask one of the Tech guys. They offer wireless on campus, so i don't think they're worried about others stealing their connection. Who knows, though.
 
They would also be able to tell because they should see multiple MAC addresses on that port in the switch. This is one reason why we lock down all ports on our switches to a single MAC address.
 
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would they ban wireless routers? Or is it all routers? I'm not an anal retentive network admin, so I am at a loss as to why enforcing this would be worth their time, maybe someone could explain this...
Click to expand...

Two reasons - security and interferrence.

You cannot provide good wireless coverage if people are bringing up other radios/access points. So there are two very good reasons why it is discouraged.

And having wireless is a security risk because people could then attach to the network without being tracked and their location known.
 
If going through a router, there's on ly one MAC on the "WAN" side: the router's WAN (Ethernet) interface.

If it was a straight-up router, you'd see multiple IP addresses from that MAC.

If NAT/PAT/NAPT is enabled, then you'd only see the one IP address (the "outside" address) coming from that one MAC. Some of that will depend on whether address substitution is enabled (most SOHO, it is).

TTL and deep packet inspection are the most likely method of detection.

Of course, they could drop the TTL to the user such that putting in a router will cause the TTL to expire, and all the inbound (to the user) traffic to fail (TTL Expired).

They could also put in "private networking" such that there can only be one valid IP address for that link (a /30 or /31 mask). That would prevent dropping in a switch to share the connection.

It's not hard and doesn't really require much admin time (compared to chasing down rogue "That rule can't possibly apply to ME!" types ....).

If they *really* wanted to be a pain, then they could put in proxy authentication, so you have to supply a login credential for each session. That would make it easy to track SSL tunnels too.


FWIW

Scott


 
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