As a student I'm on the UTC-MEMO mailing list, the list where University Relations Director Chuck Cantrell spams everyone. Today I get this interesting bit I, not living on campus, hadn't heard earlier:
Due to security concerns and requirements to keep the network working, as of Jan. 15 [email was sent yesterday, 22 January], dorm students are required to re-register their computers. A great many dorm students (over 900) have already completed this process [presumably everyone who tried to use Internet in the past week]. ...
If the dorm computer is not registered with the network, any web page should take them to the registration web form.... This only applies to students using computers in all UTC (including Place) dormitories. ... Security issues, including abuse of the campus Acceptable Use Practices, is a growing problem, particularly with dormitory computers. Registration of computers is a necessary step for accountability in the use of campus technology resources.
My guess according to the mail is they have the dorm subnet's web proxy (or gateway, depending if it works for other too) check the database of registered users (against MAC address, I assume), and bump them to the registration page instead if not present. That seems to be a plausible configuration for what the mail describes.
As Chuck writes, this is to combat "abuse of the [AUP]." I can't help but read that as "file sharing." I sure as hell wouldn't risk being completely identifiable over the dorm network as a file sharing user, because universities kick you out for that sort of thing.
Basically I know I shouldn't begrudge them their network, and it's no worse than what commercial ISPs can do by making you authenticate with PPP (oE or no oE), and the user isn't prevented in a technical manner from doing such things, but it still doesn't sit entirely well.
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My university has been doing that for the (almost) four years that I’ve lived in the reshalls. During my freshman and sophomore years, students were required to physically go down to the the ResNet office and fill out a form explicitly stating how many computers you had, what OSes they were running, and the MAC of the NIC cards.
ResNet would then configure the port in the dorm room to only accept the cards that were registered with them. If a different machine was plugged in, the port would be deactivated. As a result, my MAC addresses are DE-AD-C0-FF-EE-00 and DE-AD-BE-EF-00-00.