<p>Just curious: Does your child bring a wireless router/access point to his/her dorm room and set up his/her own wireless network which is shared by all the roommates? Is this generally allowed by IT at the school?</p>
<p>I have the impression that the computer administrators at school generally are not particularly pleased by this, even if they do not prohibit the students from doing this. In one year, I remember seeing a regulation at DS's college that an access point (owned and set up by a student) is acceptable but a router is not.</p>
<p>I raised this question because we are wondering whether it is convenient to have a wireless printer set up in a dorm room. The new technology like air print (from Apple, mostly for iOS devices?), ePrint/eFax (from HP?) appears to be quite useful if it works well. Dad/Mom could send a paper printout (e.g., boarding pass) to their loved one's printer thousands miles away, How cool is this?!</p>
<p>D’s school does not allow personal networks. A dorm room is sooo tiny, your kid would be able to make the two steps from anywhere in the room to walk up to his printer with his laptop in hand, plug the USB cord in and print whatever he needs. As far as boarding passes… they can load them on their smartphones nowadays!</p>
<p>“Dad/Mom could send a paper printout (e.g., boarding pass) to their loved one’s printer thousands miles away, How cool is this?!”</p>
<p>^^Helicoptering made easy with the aid of the new tech. ;)</p>
<p>My D’s school also doesn’t allow them. She doesn’t have a printer; come to think of it, I’m not sure how she prints her boarding passes. But she does, even without airprint! (I’m so hopelessly behind the times, I don’t even know what that is :eek:)</p>
<p>It was always easier & faster to plug in a wired cable, even tho their dorm & apartment was wired for wireless. There was an ethernet outlet available for each student as well.</p>
I think it is a USB cable whch connects the printer with the PC/Mac, right?</p>
<p>Many years ago, before the wireless was available in every dorm room, only one ethernet outlet was working and the other one was broken in DS’s dorm room. So they had no choice but to set up a wireless access point – they did not want to wait for IT support to come out to help them as it might take too long.</p>
<p>BTW, the access point is not the same as a router. It is the router that was disallowed in that year at his school. Of course, an ethernet switch would serve the same purpose as well if the students are willing to use a wired connection.</p>
<p>Recently, I failed to persuade DS to go with a fancier printer with airprint/ePrint/eFax capabilities. He may be more practical and level-headed than me.</p>
<p>Both of my kids’ schools did not allow personal wireless networks brought by the students. BUT DD’s school did have wireless connections in the rooms, all public areas of the dorms, the library media center, and almost all the classrooms…and the student union and even outside on campus.</p>
<p>There’s a good reason why wireless routers aren’t allowed…they add to the headaches of IT staff responsible for ensuring the reliability and especially…the security of the dorm network. </p>
<p>Most people don’t know how and worse…aren’t willing to take the time to properly secure their wireless networks which could enable outsiders or neighboring dormmates unauthorized access to someone’s network to do who knows what. This issue isn’t just in schools, but also among older adults who aren’t technically inclined or worse…feel “it ain’t worth the bother”. </p>
<p>Also, if everyone is running a wireless network…they could interfere with other wireless devices relied upon by the dorm staff/college/others.</p>
<p>They could have just purchased a switch. Switches are usually cheaper than wireless devices. Think of a switch as a wired access point. I have one of these in my office because I have three computers. We have one at home for the first floor - our first floor has a wired network - service into the house is in the basement.</p>
<p>Routers can often be configured to operate as access points or switches but it’s a waste of money to pay for the additional functionality.</p>
<p>I’m not sure as the pricing differences between wireless and non-wireless routers and switches are such that it isn’t worth it IMHO to buy a switch or a non-wireless router in most cases. Especially if we’re talking buying used as there are plenty of worthwhile recent wireless routers one can pick up used in the NYC area for $25 or less if one looks around and knows which brands to avoid.</p>
<p>Recently, there apears to be many reasonably priced (e.g., under $200) laser printers intended for the residential wireless network market. This kind of printer seems to be not a good fit for a dorm room, unless at least it is put into a peer-to-peer mode (rather than an infrastructure mode in which the wireless router dynamically provides the IP address to a wireless-networked printer in a typical home network setup. The IT at campus really does not like you to have a separate subnet which is invisible to them. They do not mind if you need to use more than one mac/physical addresses, e.g., one for laptop, and another for a smartphone or tablet and yet another for a networked printer.)</p>
<p>At my home, for some reason, an old small switch got used much more often in the past decades, and many routers were mostly unused (and we just donated two of these to Salvation Army or Goodwill!) This is because we have switched our ISP services many times, some using dialup, some using DSL and some using cable modem. Except for the very early years, almost all of these boxes from ISPs had the router functions included. Heck…we still have two working 2wires DSL, of which only one is being used.)</p>
<p>My D did setup her own router as wireless in rooms not guaranteed (though it is available in common/study areas) in her dorm. Ethernet ports x 2 in each room but they did not want to be wired(need freedom in that huge dorm room, don’t you know). As both are Apple afficonados, D set up her TIme Capsule as the router and, I believe, both are using that for auto backups though the roomie occas backs up to her own external HD. They have a wireless printer but I am told it has “issues” so D often just connects her MBP to it via USB when needs to print. They are savvy enough to use same class of encryption on their “network” as any home network uses. I believe they can grant temporary access to others who want to use their network but this is also password protected. My D’s main complaint is the cost of ink cartridges; she had no idea how pricey they are and how the printer can hold you hostage for even one low cartridge. Huh, didn’t she hear me muttering at my printer all those years?</p>
<p>You’d be surprised at the numbers of users who set up home networks tend to either leave routers as they came(unsecured as default) or use WEP encryption/security which has been known as a joke in the computer network security community for at least 8 years. </p>
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<p>That was my experience as an employee at two internet startups in the early '00s when we’d go through ink cartridges every month at around $30 each. Another annoying thing was that they had a nasty tendency to dry up if one doesn’t print frequently enough at a given time interval or the humidity is low. </p>
<p>Comparatively speaking…my old college laser printer(HP 4L) which was gifted to me was expensive…but the toner cartridge lasted over 10 years printing several thousand pages before needing replacement. Replacement cartridges were around $70…but if they last several thousand pages and a decade…they’re a great bargain in the long term…provided you only need to print B&W documents. The second cartridge probably still has another 2-4 years left before needing replacement at the rate I’m printing…and use it to print everything from academic papers, invoices, tax returns, online tech manuals, online articles I want to keep, etc.</p>
<p>As a non-computer person, why would I be expected to know that “WEP is a joke”? What’s the difference between WEP, WPA and whatever other acronyms I see, and why is the onus on me to figure it all out because computer companies can’t name things anything that indicate clearly what they are?</p>
<p>Personally, I think that is letting the college off the hook. You/they are paying for a service, which includes two working jacks. Part of growing up for an 18-year-old is to learn when/how to complete a work order. (They quickly learn how to order pizza and buffalo wings at midnight – surely, they can learn to complete a repair order for maintenance!). Valuable life skills, IMO.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I would have gone with a switch.</p>
<p>On many wireless router booklets geared towards computer novices and associated online support sites from the manufacturers, they actually have warnings about WEP being weak on security. Granted, most people don’t bother to read manuals IME…</p>
<p>More importantly, there tends to be an inverse relation between ease of use and greater security when it comes to computer systems/networks and many other things in life. There’s a reason why Windows and early MacOS(Pre-OSX) were popular and yet…so prone to being hacked, crashing, or infested with viruses…and it’s not only because one took up the lion’s share of the operating system marketplace. </p>
<p>As for the naming conventions…fault the association which is responsible for creating/standardizing wireless network security standards…they’re the ones who come up with WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc.</p>
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<p>Routers…like many electronics are one thing I tend to buy used because there isn’t much of an impact on wear and tear and used prices tend to be so low that if it does conk out…it isn’t much trouble to get a new one. </p>
<p>Picked up a Linksys WRT54GS router that’s only a couple of years old for less than $20 a month ago on CL because a friend’s old wireless router went kaput and he needed a replacement ASAP for him and his roommates. He was more than happy to pay me a slight markup and provide dinner for my coming over to set it up…took less than 10 minutes to set up and get them up and running.</p>
<p>Got a wired hp print/scan/copy for either 29 or 39 at Target back in August. At that price he can hook up his wire. No worries about whether the router or whatever is working when it comes print time. Neither of his schools wanted them to have their own networks.</p>
<p>Personal wireless routers in my D’s school are also not allowed. The campus has a very decent wireless network, and after some visits to the Help Desk in September to change the configurations of her computer, she has had no issues.</p>
<p>As discussed above, the headaches for the school IT group would be tremendous if all students could have their own wireless routers.</p>
<p>I ran into this one with DD1’s printer - getting it to work wirelessly would mean it would need either a local router/hub/whatever or the printer would have to be registered with the local IT constabulary and be allowed to join the dorm network. </p>
<p>Neither option was doable without significant time investment and we ditched the idea, opting for a normal USB connection instead. The whole idea of using the printer wirelessly was to put it at a convenient location in the pet carrier sized room and allow roomie to access it…</p>
;)</p>