The mysterious and magical HP ENGINGEER!!

[SpyOne]

Colleges always seem to be a bit behind the curve on what people expect to be able to get where they live.

I mean, it is very nice that they offer a free internet connection in every room. But they probably also prohibit you from getting your own high-speed connection installed.

Twenty years ago, having a phone in your dorm room was virtually unheard of: each floor had a phone that could only call other campus phones, and one or two pay phones for the students use. The idea that a person would expect to be able to get their own private phone line in a place where they lived, a place they were paying rent for, seemed alien to the administration. As alien as the idea that the students might want cable TV, which had been available in the surrounding community for 5 years or so.

I totally get the need to control what gets connected to your network. (Frankly, I'm amazed you'll let the students connect anything at all to the University's network: 20 years ago they wouldn't even tell students the numbers for the modems at the university's computer because those six lines were for Faculty use only) But if I am paying rent here, and I am not damaging the building by having a cable modem connected to my cable TV (and am paying the cable company appropriately), and I feel like providing wi-fi to everybody on my floor, I don't see how that's any of your business. And if you are one of those institutions that requires freshmen to live in the dorms, then you really need to provide your customers with something like a normal tenant-landlord relationship, rather than a "sleeping in Aunt Suzie's spare room and living by her rules" relationship where you charge them money.

[lordlundar]

Uh-oh, I know Jenni's gonna have a nice happy little reply for this one.

<breaks out popcorn>

[technical.angel]

Oh, hush, Lord, I'm trying to be a good girl.

Yes, we would prohibit our students from getting a high speed internet line installed... for very good reasons.

I don't think it would work, and we're sure as heck not going to let someone come in and run new wire to a room.

Res halls, or I should say, OUR res halls aren't like apartment buildings. We pay for the cable, and how the lines terminate probably would prevent the addition of a data plan.

We pay for the phone line. They go through our PBX. That would prevent the addition of a DSL plan.

If it was possible for students to get their own service, we would not care what the heck they did with it, but since we are provided our internet by an organization that is funded by the government, we have to follow their rules of usage and security. If we lose them as providers because of a student... oh boy, would that be an adventure. In the outside market, I'm sure that the level of bandwidth we needed would not be cheap.

***

So, okay, I wrote all that BEFORE talking to our server admin.

Apparently, due to the cost of rewiring most of the res halls, the network admins are looking to bump the students off our network, and pawn them off on local providers. We'll see what happens.

[lordlundar]

Oh, hush, Lord, I'm trying to be a good girl.

Since when?

[technical.angel]

Since this thread has started going to hell in a handbasket.

Outside this thread, I'm still totally evil.