Comment on Student dorm does not allow wifi routers
_thebrain_@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I would set up your router, turn off ssid broadcast and forget about it. It’s doubtful they have the equipment to find an access point that doesn’t actively announce itself to the world
stoly@lemmy.world 1 week ago
They will find it. Hidden is a software switch and your device just doesn’t show it. It’s still being advertised, however.
_thebrain_@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Maybe it depends on the access point. When I turn it off on my router there are no beacons sent. Unless you specifically probe the ssid it doesn’t announce itself. BUT granted when you make a connection the ssid does show up during the handshake. If you were watching at the exact moment of connection then it would be detectable. I suppose they could use a mass deauther device and cause new connections and detect while that is happening but they they would need to triangulate the location of said ap… Again a lot of extra equipment.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 week ago
If they go looking. It’s unlikely they went out of their way to purchase and configure specialized devices in the building to catch it proactively.
stoly@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I work IT at a university. They do go looking for this sort of thing. Every time students move in and plug in their equipment from home, entire network segments collapse. There is a game of whack a mole each time the term starts.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 week ago
If somebody goes and causes an outage, I would expect nothing less than a tech walking around and trying to triangulate the offending router.
But in OP’s case, it’s an external ISP that provides internet services to the dorm. As long as nobody gives them a reason to start looking, I don’t expect a for-profit ISP to be sending out a contractor proactively beyond the first week of move-ins. That costs them money, and likely a lot more money than they would recover by catching the handful of people trying to dogde the per-device upcharge.