panther33157

I'm moving in to a dorm this summer and I think the no wireless router rule is ridiculous. I'm not one to think of myself above the rules but c'mon...in this day and age a wireless router is so convenient. Also, to hook up my Xbox 360/PS3/Wii is a huge hassle. I have to connect them to my laptop and enable internet sharing every time I want to play online? AND I can't do it with my new mac so I would have to have my old PC out when I wanted to do this? No thanks.

My question is: has anybody attempted to set up a wireless router in their dorm room? If I were to do so I would obviously have the security bumped way up, the SSID not broadcasted, and encrypted. Is the tech department really concerned with this issue or do they have other, more important issues to deal with than a rouge router or two. As long as I'm not doing anything illegal do they really care that much? Do you know of anybody that has been caught using a wireless router?

Again, I'm not trying to place myself above the rules but the fact that wireless isn't available in the dorms rooms is surprising to me. It's becoming a common feature in all colleges.

aforautumn

their IT policies tend to be unusually draconian, and i think they would actually care that you do it. i dont know how likely it is that they can find out, and i doubt its a serious offense the first time, so no harm in trying.


as for why they dont have wifi in the rooms: they're working on it. The walls are nice a thick so it requires significantly more resources on their part to set up. last time i heard something about it, they were in the process of setting this is up, but i doubt that will happen for a while.

gthopeful

People used to set up wireless routers all the time when I was at UF despite the rules. I wouldn't worry about it.

panther33157

Thanks for the responses. I might as well give it a try and see if they care. As long as I'm not doing anything malicious with it I feel I'll be ok...

andre10

just pretend you didn't hear them say that...lol

freshgator

UF now has wireless internet available in nearly all dorms on campus.

data

@freshgator - do you have a source on this? When I was there recently I was told that only Hume has wireless in the actual dorm rooms themselves (but all the dorms had wireless to use in the common rooms).

ASMAJ

Maybe the commons, but not in every room.

kaitlinc3

Hume just has it only in the common areas, too...but I always got it in my room because I was really close to the common room.

toydiamondring

I lived in Hume East last year and during the Spring semester they installed wireless in the dorm and everyone had wireless. It was pretty fast, though not as fast as the wired internet.

Jennings is the only other dorm I know of that gets wireless in the rooms.

orangenblue

i lived in rawlings and had wireless. so did broward. so did yulee. i think most dorms have them by now on the east part of campus. and fyi we got wireless before hume.

and about routers they could care less nobody checks. but nobody on my floor could actually figure out how to configure one because the uf network is confusing.

illusionsx

I lived in Yulee last year and we had wireless, as did Mallory and Reid, by the end of the year.

goufgators

If you're worried about administrators sniffing your wireless router, try turning off SSID broadcasting. It might make your router less detectable.