<p>In regards to wifi in dorms, the way it sounded to me was that the dorms are wifi but structurally, it is nearly impossible for the signal to pass through the signature hokie stone walls. That is why they still have the Ethernet ports. Personally, I don’t see it as a disadvantage because when I do work I like to sit down and work. Its a personal thing but something like that is really not influential to my decision.</p>
<p>Some dorms are wireless and the support is growing. Lee (at least my floor) has wireless; VT-wireless and WLAN.</p>
<p>FYI, you’ll want to use vt-wireless whenever possible. Move WLAN to the lower priority part of your network connections; using the webauth login is annoying. It’s particularly bad if you close your browser with multiple tabs open only to reopen the browser and they ALL GO TO THE WEBAUTH PAGE!</p>
<p>Actually both the tour guide and the dorm guide said the reason the dorms are not wifi is because they are very strict about downloading and firewalls. They said you can, but you have to have tech IT come and check out your laptop. If they can break through the system then it is a no go.</p>
<p>I am not internet savvy regarding these issues, but that was what I grasped when they were talking about it.</p>
<p>They even said that kids who do illegal downloads will get in serious trouble and it is not a joke to the school where they will look the other way.</p>
<p>Believe me, they are not very strict at all concerning torrenting and illegal downloads. The judicial department really wants to spend as little time as possible on these cases and will almost always let you off with a warning or simply won’t bother with your case (it’s also pretty easy to claim that you got a virus or something along those lines as well). I’ve never heard of anyone getting in serious trouble unless you keep doing it after getting several warnings, the judicial department simply doesn’t care.</p>
<p>The real reason they haven’t put in wifi is the cost. You get a unique security certificate to connect to the network, it’s not as if they don’t know who is downloading something.</p>
<p>If ‘being serious’ is a sternly written email to you to knock it off then yes, they’re serious.</p>
<p>ymon and chuy are correct. They don’t want to deal with stuff like this and put most of their efforts into prevention.</p>
<p>You don’t need them to set up your router and you don’t need to run VTnet if you know what you’re doing as far as internet safety goes. Torrenting is far riskier than ‘other’ methods, but don’t PM any of us asking about that kind of stuff (at least not me.)</p>
<p>If your router won’t work, spoof the MAC address of a device that does, turn off your SSID, use MAC address filtering, and throw a WPA2 key on your router just for kicks.</p>
<p>okay now I have to bookmark this page and remember to print it up before we go for the just in case purpose.</p>
<p>Quick question, off topic, but still…DS chose MAC for UMDCP, and loves it, DD has looked at her program and has decided that route too, any opinions about MAC over HP? She will be a Psychology/Sociology major/minor.</p>
<p>I think Macs are underpowered and overpriced. They can’t run as many programs as a PC (without emulation or dual booting) and cost more for less power. Some people actually like them though.</p>
<p>The difference isn’t really Mac versus HP, it’s Mac versus PC (Windows.) Some majors require that you get a PC, not sure about psychology. If I had to guess I’d say you’ll be fine either way, so go ahead and get a Mac if you feel like spending $500-1k more or less of a computer.</p>
<p>(Yes I know I’m about to get flamed.)</p>