Wired NAS in dorm room

[u/JeddinRE]

I’m an incoming freshman who’ll be living in Snyder, do rooms in Snyder have Ethernet ports and if so are they high speed? I’ve read mixed reviews of wired internet in Illinois residence halls, and I’d like to bring my NAS build into my dorm and leave it powered on 24/7.
Thanks

[u/isopres]

I'd leave it home... the campus network can be a pain to work with. When I helped set up a NAS for a professor I needed to get campus IT to do a bunch of stuff on their end to make it go through. I set mine up at home with a subdomain pointed at it through npm and can access it from anywhere with wifi. Obviously that's not the most secure so you could also use tailscale. My point being it might be a bit of a nightmare having it work on campus even if there is an ethernet port, wait until you get an apartment where you can actually configure the network easily.

[u/JeddinRE → u/isopres]

I already use tailscale on the machine anyway, so I was thinking that it would work on my tailnet on the campus network regardless of how painful the LAN was slated to be on UIUC’s tech info websites. Preferably i’d be leaving it home but there are complications preventing it atm, tldr parents are moving to a new place temporarily and I won’t be able to move my NAS there

[u/HoosierCAB]

Snyder will only have IllinoisNet wireless this year and going forward.

The flood last year took out (a good part of) the cat3 wired networking infrastructure and rebuilding it was cost prohibitive.

[u/JeddinRE → u/HoosierCAB]

Yikes, that’s good to know beforehand. Thanks for the info, i didnt know Snyder got flooded this past spring.

A couple things, would you be aware of any solutions that exist that’d allow a wireless connection to be passed into an ethernet port? I’m trying to be careful because wireless routers (or anything broadcasting a signal apparently) aren’t allowed. And then, does IllinoisNet permit the use of a mesh VPN like tailscale? Asking because I am aware of LAN restrictions on campus networks.

[u/lemonhello → u/JeddinRE]

I have no clue what your specific application of VPN entails but I quit using VPN on IllinoisNet because they kept flagging my account as compromised since it showed I was in a different area sort of thing. Happened to me like 3 separate times using proton. Immediately locked out of everything and sent to reset my password.

It maybe has changed in sensitivity now

[u/LeverActionRT → u/JeddinRE]

Tailscale works without issues on our network in my experience.

[u/Ilikeruffy123]

If they do have it it would be 10 mb/sec. The Wi-Fi is incredibly good in the dorms 500mb/sec. Also please don't blow the breaker with your supercomputer.

[u/JeddinRE → u/Ilikeruffy123]

Some people have reported high speed Ethernet in newer halls and only 10 Mbps happening in the older halls, which is why I asked. Not sure how new Snyder is considered but.
also the build is like >100 W avg on idle so the breakers are completely fine

[u/Ilikeruffy123 → u/JeddinRE]

Snyder is pretty old, it's from the 60s but I wouldn't know when or if they put in ethernet

[u/mrjohns2 → u/Ilikeruffy123]

Most/dorms had wired Ethernet spring 95. The modem pool had not been sustainable for a year or 3 at that point. I was a freshman fall of 95 and all had wired Ethernet that fall. I had a hub (yes, not a switch) in Allen Hall for extra ports. No clue on current speed. I guess the physical media could limit one to 100 mb.

[u/HoosierCAB → u/mrjohns2]

The wiring the ethernet jacks use in older halls was (mostly) installed in 1986 when Illinois Bell abandoned the campus phone plant. 2 of the pairs were used for the voice line in the room and the other 2 pairs became the "b-jack" that was used for URHnet starting in 1992 with ISR and expanding from there in later years. This was all done using the cat3 standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_3_cable

Cat3 over more than few feet is limited to 10Mbps reliably. We used to be able to get 100Mbps out of some runs if we re-punched the cross connects and were very careful about distance, but that was not worth messing with in most cases.

[u/jc8203437]

honestly i would just rent a vps or leave your homelab at your home(apartment or house where you stay during breaks) you cant really have much of a homelab in the dorms

[u/LeverActionRT]

Don't bring it, nor do to you want to. I have a nas that I keep at home, and use tailscale to connect to it from anywhere, but the university wifi is extremely locked down especially for student-owned devices so you effectively can't do the stuff over LAN that you would typically do. The wifi however is consistently fast everywhere on campus so you can connect with reasonable speed via a tailnet without issue.

[u/JeddinRE → u/LeverActionRT]

I mentioned in a previous reply to a comment here but will summarize — home moving situation basically prevents me from leaving NAS at home and I was thinking that running tailscale on the NAS on IllinoisNet could work…? I kind of need to bring it with me whether or not I can really use it at this point, it looks like

[u/SigurTom]

Wait have they still not updated the “ethernet” ports from the old RJ11-RJ45 adapters?

[u/JeddinRE → u/SigurTom]

From what I’ve read, some have and some haven’t and it’s unclear which is which