Better network access for the students in the residence halls, those off-campus and
those who bring their mobile computers to campus is a critical part of improving
student access.
Consistency is good for the user because it reduces confusion. Consistency is good
for UB because it reduces support costs. The pursuit of consistency, where technology
permits, should extend to all residence hall, public and departmental ports, as well
as dial-in facilities.
Use of all UB supported network ports must not violate laws, UB or SUNY policies.
Acceptable use restrictions are primarily aimed at communicating to computing users
that they may not violate laws, SUNY or UB policies. They also are intended to prevent
one user from interfering with other users' access to the network or computing services.
Our primary goal is attribution of responsibility for improper use, not policing how
the ports are being used. This is consistent with CIT's current practice of only
intervening when an improper action is reported. This goal is tempered by
our desire to limit the staff time that is used to track down and deal with offenders.
As with all services, adequate support staff must be provided to support expanded
access alternatives.
The CIT Help Desk will
provide primary user support for public open ports, as well as residence hall ports
and therefore should have a primary role in defining supported hardware and software
configurations.
Policies for Residence Halls and Campus Open Ports
- Actions that violate UB policies, SUNY policies, Federal law or NY State law
are not permitted from any UB network connection.
- Residence hall and open ports are firewall restricted and require authentication
using the DCE Principal.
- There is no limitation on connection time through residence hall or open ports.
Periodic re-authentication is currently required for open and residence hall ports. The authentication time limit is 3 hours for open ports and 8 hours for residence hall ports. Dial-in connections will be terminated after 24 hours of connect time.
- For open ports, the client operating system must use dynamic IP address assignment
via Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). The use of DHCP address
assignment for residence hall ports is also strongly recommended. The default
DHCP lease time is set to 3 hours for open ports and 8 hours for residence
hall ports. The DHCP lease is renewed automatically as long as the port is in use.
- Only tcp/ip protocols will be routed to the residence hall ports, open ports
and dial-in connections.
- All tcp/ip services are available to all on-campus locations. Access to
residence hall ports, open ports or dial-in connections will not be provided
from non-affiliated Internet connections. This means, for example, that you
may not offer a web-server for non-affiliated Internet access through any of
these connections. Out-going access to Internet resources will not be
restricted. Affiliated organizations are those with private networks but
share a part of the University's mission, e.g. hospitals connected to the
School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
- All residence hall ports, open ports or dial-in connection traffic must abide
by acceptable use restrictions.
For example:
- No commercial use.
- No malicious actions, such as denial of service attacks.
- No harassment of other computer users.
- No distribution of pornographic materials.
- No copyright violations.
- No offering of DHCP or Domain Name Services (DNS).
- No advertising of network routing information.
- No network extensions from either the residence hall or open ports.
- IP address assignment via DHCP for all open ports is required, you may not set
an ip address in your machine's configuration when using these ports.
- If the University receives valid complaints of improper activity, an immediate
cessation of that activity is expected upon notification to the user.
- Ports may be disabled on an emergency basis to stop violations of acceptable
use restrictions.
Failure to abide by these policies may result in loss of access to network and computing
resources, University disciplinary action and/or other legal action.
CIT Support for Residence Halls and Campus Open Ports
- The CIT Help Desk
will provide assistance for access from the ResNet supported list of operating
systems, but there are no restrictions on the operating system that may be
used with the exception that connections must use dynamic ip address assignment
via DHCP.
- The CIT Help Desk
will provide assistance for access from the ResNet supported list of network
adapters, but there are no restrictions on the network adapter that may be used.
- For a list of Help Desk
supported network adapters and operating systems, please consult:
http://www.buffalo.edu/iconnect/comp_reqs.shtml
