<p>Hey guys!</p>
<p>I just wanted to know if "personal" wireless routers are allowed in the dorms and, if so, are they really worth it? Frankly, it just bugs me that I have to have that ethernet cable plugged in all the time and maybe even pulled halfway across the room, you know? Haha, this is my slightly lazy side talking. Also, I have a printer and it would be great if I could connect to it wirelessly...Thanks for the help!</p>
<p>My roommate had a wireless router and it was nice to be able to move around more freely. Keep in mind though, you’re still probably going to want to have your laptop plugged in, so it’s more of a case of having fewer wires.</p>
<p>Yes you can, just make sure you encrypt it or you’ll end up getting nasty letters about copyright infringement. It’s really not worth it in my opinion though; you can get really long ethernet cables for cheap for when you want to sit on your bed or whatever with your computer, and you’ll be at your desk the majority of the time anyway. But yeah, it’s allowed unless something changed.</p>
<p>edit: The printer thing is a good point.</p>
<p>Oh okay. Thanks guys! I think I’ll experiment once I get there and see if I really NEED a router or if it is, in reality, a pointless luxury. 
Although the printer point is still valid… XP</p>
<p>I’d bring one. Set up a MAC address filter, don’t broadcast the SSID, and add a WPA2 key onto it. Some routers may be blocked and/or if you get a notice, just have it spoof the MAC address of something else (PS3, PC, laptop, etc)</p>
<p>are there any dorms with wi-fi … or are they all wired</p>
<p>The academic side of campus has wi-fi, and I believe some of the dorms are actually close enough to pick up a signal, although probably not a strong one. As far as I know none of the dorms actually come with wi-fi, but maybe the new ones do.</p>
<p>They had just gotten wifi up and running on the upper floors (maybe all) of Lee last year. I know Hillcrest also has wireless.</p>
<p>Sorry if this has been covered, but since chuy is here, why isn’t the entire campus (dorms included) wi-fi? For a school that has a high dominance of tech students this seems odd to me. I’m sure I’m missing something. Help me out chuy.</p>
<p>The whole campus basically is wifi. You probably can’t get it in the middle of the drill field or if you’re in some of the basements, but all academic buildings that I’ve been into have wifi. They’re constantly adding it and in a year or so I’d imagine campus will essentially be covered.</p>
<p>This brings up another point: use vt-wireless instead of WLAN when you get to campus.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say the whole campus has Wifi. Few of the dorms have Wifi for some reason, and I don’t remember if the dinning halls do or not.</p>
<p>To be honest I really don’t know why the dorms don’t have wifi. Your wired connection is faster than wifi would be, but I don’t know if that’s the reason. The signal would probably be spotty in the dorms with all the walls and everything.</p>
<p>Owens, Hokie Grill, D2, West End, Deets, and DX all have wifi.</p>
<p>so do you think I could use the D2 wi-fi from PY?</p>
<p>I used Wifi without a problem, do make sure your network is secure unless you trust everyone in the building. My freshman year I let a select people know the password so we can have LAN wars and play games through it ect on our computers and shout down the hall and stuff. It was fun but also addicting. </p>
<p>Anyway yeah it’s allowed. However even if you download too much in one day (over 600mb) sometimes I would get an e-mail saying my bandwidth is restricted for 24 hours or something. So if you download a movie on itunes then you may get one of those.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure there’s no download cap; they just watch uploads. Well, they quota uploads and will bust for it. I’m sure they watch common ports.</p>
<p>hokagesama, my daughter is on the 5th floor of Lee. Those floors have wireless? A bunch of networks popped up when we turned on her laptop today. Do you know which network it is and how she signs onto it?</p>
<p>If one say “VT Wireless” or something like that she can sign on that one with her hokiespa password and username. If none of them are anything like that they may just be private networks.</p>
<p>Welcome to Tech though!</p>
<p>Thanks chuy !</p>
<p>I will have her check. We’re all so confused with everything you have to do, know, etc lol!</p>
<p>We found that the VT_Wireless signal was pretty spotty on the 4th floor of P-Y; this was during the heavy rain last Wednesday, so it might be better now. Setting up a wifi router is extremely simple, though; in less than 5 minutes we had my daughter’s laptop, wireless printer, and Wii on the network (no spoofing necessary for the gaming system.)</p>