UL Network Information !!!!!! READ HERE FIRST before asking about it !!!

rmacm

UL Network Info:

Data Network:
The college's data network physically covers all the buildings on the campus including the student villages. Within each building there is CAT5/6 cabling running to each wall point. These wallpoints are connected back to edge switches in each building. Each of these edge switches is then connected to a backbone switch in that building which is in turn connected to one of 2 switches in the Library via multimode fibre.

To provide internet access these switches are connected to 2 routers which are connected to the HEAnet backbone. This connection currently has 400Mb/s bandwidth and there's plenty of room for expansion.

Aside from the physical side of things within buildings the network is Ethernet based. The back bone runs on the ATM protocol.

Wireless:
According to the ITD website the following areas have wireless connectivity.
* Library Boardroom (Staff Only)
* Cafe Allegro (the Foundation Building)
* Atrium (the Foundation Building)
* Library - European Documentation Centre
* Student Union Postgrad Common Room
* Student Union Common Area
* Student Union Clubs & Societies
* Phase 1A - Canteen
* Schuman Building - Level 2 MBA space
* Staff Common Room in the Millstream Building and associated meeting rooms MC2-003,4,5. (Staff Only)
* Engineering Research Building - ERB-006 and 7 (weak signal in 7), ER0-008, ER0-009.
* Plassey House Board Room, Wood Room, Maunsell Room. (Staff Only)
* Cafe Sportif - (PESS Building).
* Science Centre - LERO Building
* Shannon Development Block 1
* UL Arena
* CSIS

The name of the wireless network is ulwireless and it does not use any type of encryption. If you are connected to this make sure you are connecting to an access point and not an ad-hoc network created by someone. It is important that you do not enable Windows file sharing and take security precautions if you are accessing the fixed or wireless network.

I.e. set a bloody password for the Administrator account if you're using Windows and disable the guest account.

When configuring your laptop for wireless access make sure it's setup to obtain an address via DHCP. You'll also need to do this to access the fixed network. You may also need to submit you MAC address to ITD to gain access to the network.

http://www.ul.ie/pdf/532994335.pdf - ITD regulations on what can/can't be connected/done on the network.

http://www.ul.ie/pdf/568080029.pdf - configure your machine for access to the fixed network.

http://www.ul.ie/pdf/774547016.pdf - configure your machine for access to the wireless network.

http://www.ul.ie/pdf/789132793.pdf - form to register your MAC address with ITD.

Proxy info:
http://student-proxy.ul.ie
Port 8080 for all services.

This supports SOCKS4 compliant FTP software aswell.

Web based mail:
https://exchstudent1.ul.ie/exchange - provides an Outlook web interface.

To login use the following format for the username and password.
Username: UL\<idnumber>
Password: <yourpassword>

To answer a question that seems to be asked quite often here no you will not be able to access the UL wireless network from Millford Grange, Elm Park or whereever the hell else you live. There's a small chance that some of the houses in Kilmurry or Drumroe that are very close to buildings that have wireless access points will be able to pick up a connection but this is unlikely.

A lot if not most P2P software and gaming over the internet is blocked....traffic inside the LAN is pretty much a free for all. Although the way the network has been split into a number of VPNS may affect this depending on wheather the inter VPN traffic is being filtered aswell. These policies are in place for a good reason and are probably there to stay. There are ways around it but if anyone wants to do it it's up to them to figure it out.

Anyone else got any questions or anyone want to point out anything I may have missed. Denis can you sticky this to save me and a few others answering the same questions every few weeks. It'll keep my levels of frustration and insanity down and allow more time for important things such as eating and drinking.

Cheers
Rory

Peteee

rmacm wrote: »

....ATM.....

*snigger*

kaimera

Stickied

rmacm

Just as a quick addition to this. If you have your laptop setup to use the UL proxy and then you decide to go home for a weekend and use your home broadband connection you will need to change the settings in IE/Firefox/Opera (or whatever you use) to not use the proxy any more. It's just the reverse of the steps you use to configure a proxy.

Otherwise when you try and connect to the web at home your browser will still be trying to send requests through the UL proxy which your laptop won't be able to access and therefore you won't be able to browse the web.

Cheers
Rory

kaimera

Ah Rory,

yore generosity knows no bounds

rmacm

What can I say I'm in a good mood for once.

Cheers
Rory

Nutty

proxy's arent needed for the wireless by the way.. and not sure but dont think you even need to register laptops anymore to plug into the network..

Spazdarn

Would I be able to get the Xbox 360 going in Plassey Village?

1huge1

ToiletFusion wrote: »

Would I be able to get the Xbox 360 going in Plassey Village?

No they block ya from that stuff

Spazdarn

Is there any way rerouting the connection to a router and using the wireless adapter with the xbox would do any good?

rmacm

ToiletFusion wrote: »

Is there any way rerouting the connection to a router and using the wireless adapter with the xbox would do any good?

No because your connection to the internet eventually has to pass through UL's network infrastructure and it'll be blocked there. Granted I'm not really sure what you're asking are you talking about something like this:

XBox <---->Wireless Router/Access Point<---->UL Network<---->Internet

In the above case then the answer is no.

Spazdarn

Damn I was hoping someone would know a port or something i could use. No xbox live for me

rmacm

ToiletFusion wrote: »

Damn I was hoping someone would know a port or something i could use. No xbox live for me

It's not a matter of someone knowing a port to use, Xbox Live uses the following ports:

UDP 53 (DNS - not entirely sure if this is needed).
UDP 88
UDP 3074
TCP 3074

I've never configured an Xbox before so I haven't a clue how configurable they are, kaimera should be able to tell you.

SSH tunnelling may be an option but I'll leave that up to you to figure out

dK1NG

What do you need to get hooked up to the internet in the villages?

Computer obviously, but do I have to get a particular router, modem, cable or whatever?

Clearly, I'm not the most tech savvy person!

rmacm

dK1NG wrote: »

What do you need to get hooked up to the internet in the villages?

Computer obviously, but do I have to get a particular router, modem, cable or whatever?

Clearly, I'm not the most tech savvy person!

Read my original post, it's got links to configuring your machine to access the network. Other than that you need a desktop/laptop with a network card (anything built within the last few years will have one).

Then you need some CAT5 cable to go between the outlet on the wall in your room to your laptop and that should sort you out.

rmacm

rmacm wrote: »

Read my original post, it's got links to configuring your machine to access the network. Other than that you need a desktop/laptop with a network card (anything built within the last few years will have one).

Then you need some CAT5 cable to go between the outlet on the wall in your room to your laptop and that should sort you out.

^^^^ oh wasn't I a bad boy. I got a rather interesting PM earlier on from someone who will remain nameless lest someone tries to lynch them.

Right anyway I know I mentioned that it is possible to plug a wireless router/access point into an ITD network port but strictly speaking this is against the ITD code of conduct.

If you are going to do this it is very important that you disable any routing, DHCP, DNS/other name serving applications or any other service that may conflict with the services ITD provide over the network as it is very easy to fcuk things up and cause other people to lose access to the network.

I assumed when I posted what I did before that if someone was going to do something like this they'd have a vague notion of what they were doing and know to disable the stuff I've listed above before doing mad things.

shabouwcaw

does anyone know what ports are open on the network?

im afraid to run a portscanner because it may fall under the heading of "reading network information which is not intended for your use"

is it just 8080 and 1080?

rmacm

shabouwcaw wrote: »

does anyone know what ports are open on the network?

im afraid to run a portscanner because it may fall under the heading of "reading network information which is not intended for your use"

is it just 8080 and 1080?

^^^ oh no don't run a port scanner.....very bad idea. I had my internet access removed temporarily during 4th year for doing this

As far as I know you can SSH out of the network so port 22 would have to be open, not sure about from the outside in though although it probably is possible. They'd also have to allow their mail servers access through the firewall too. It's been a while since I've used the UL network in any meaningful manner so maybe someone who's still around can provide more up to date information.

It's not a simple matter of what ports are open/not open as you can configure routers/firewalls to allow services based on a multitude of criteria to some people and not to others e.g. they could have a machine on the network acting as a mail server so SMTP would be allowed through to that machine only and not for anything else so port 25 would be open for that machine but not your machine.

shabouwcaw

well port 22 is open, thats all i need.

yeah i thought port scanning would be a bad idea..

Mrmoe

I was just wondering if it is possible to setup Skype through the UL network legally. I need to make calls to product suppliers in Ireland and the UK but unfortunately all phones available to me are only allowed to make internal calls. Any info would be appreciated.

kopykat

Mrmoe wrote: »

I was just wondering if it is possible to setup Skype through the UL network legally. I need to make calls to product suppliers in Ireland and the UK but unfortunately all phones available to me are only allowed to make internal calls. Any info would be appreciated.

i use skype the whole time and im on campus.should work fine

maryjm

anyone been able to get video working in skype on campus accomm? I seem to be having trouble!! Thanks

PeakOutput

skype and video work fine for me in kilmurry didnt have to change any settings or anything

does anyone know how to set up thunderbird on a mac to check and download from my college email i tried using the info in the outlook tutorial but had no success

1huge1

Was just curious how much space each student gets on their account on the computers.
Like I know mates in other colleges who just store files when their logged in to the network and they can access the files from any computer on campus. UL doesn't seem to have that option other than the workspace thing which is only for that specific computer and gets deleted regularly.

Would be handy to store valuable files on my account.

rmacm

Think you're roaming profile is limited to ~10MB or so. >10,000 students is a lot of people to provide storage for reliably. E.g. 100MB each for 10,000 people is a terabyte (not a huge amount of storage) but you probably need to do it in RAID for reliability and then any other network infrastructure you'd need to go with it.

1huge1

Ya I suppose and there is about like 13,000 students but hopefully they will bring it in the future. Although having to load a profile that big each time would probably make it take ages to login to each account and it takes long enough already.

rmacm

1huge1 wrote: »

Ya I suppose and there is about like 13,000 students but hopefully they will bring it in the future. Although having to load a profile that big each time would probably make it take ages to login to each account and it takes long enough already.

You're right the reason the profile is limited to ~10MB is so that it doesn't take too long to pull down over the network. The situation in the "real world" is a bit different because if you have a computer at work it's usually your computer and you use it all the time so you'll have a local profile which of course can be as big as you want.

There are ways around this though for example your 100MB of storage space wouldn't have to be part of your profile that gets loaded over the network. You could have it on a server of some manner and just use a login script to mount it when a user logs in.

net use \\SERVER_NAME\%username% would probaby do it but it's been a while since I've played with Windows login scripts.

1huge1

rmacm wrote: »

You're right the reason the profile is limited to ~10MB is so that it doesn't take too long to pull down over the network. The situation in the "real world" is a bit different because if you have a computer at work it's usually your computer and you use it all the time so you'll have a local profile which of course can be as big as you want.

There are ways around this though for example your 100MB of storage space wouldn't have to be part of your profile that gets loaded over the network. You could have it on a server of some manner and just use a login script to mount it when a user logs in.

net use \\SERVER_NAME\%username% would probaby do it but it's been a while since I've played with Windows login scripts.

Ah ya UL has a different system it seems so where it loads your profile to each computer.
I'd imagine though that for other colleges they have the profile on a server because I know a mate with 1GB of storage on his account.

Thanks for the help.

Mrmoe

Hi,

I am trying to connect to the UL wireless network on a Dell Inspiron 6400 running Windows Vista. I am able to connect to the ulwireless network. I have very good signal strength but I am unable to connect to the intermet. I have read the appropriate ITD documentation but I am still unable to figure this out. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated before I contact ITD as I am sure it is quite a simple solution that I just can't figure out myself.

maryjm

Where in campus are u trying to connect from? Have u filled in that form from ITD and u give them some code off ur computer and then ur allowed to connect to the wireless?
If not that mite be ur problem, if u havent filled in that form u can connect to the wireless but u cant connect to the internet!!

billy the squid

Had a similar problem today. ulwireless connected and worked fine inthe kemmy building but not in the Stables, despite a strong signal.

as a visitor to the college, doing all that fiddling with connection types seemed like too much hastle.

ul-public didnt work at all