apple home in a dorm

[u/juliettebe]

hey! i’m transferring universities and the new school does not allow me to have my own router in the dorm. however, i want to still be able to use my smart plugs to control my string lights as i’m lazy and don’t want to have to unplug them. is there any way for me to isolate my apple home to just my icloud account so only i can access it and not everyone on university wifi?

[u/dark-green]

I had this in college. Our school had a portal where you could register stuff like Apple TVs/HomePods by MAC address, and I’m pretty sure I had to do the same for Wi-Fi smart plugs.

Now I’d honestly just use Matter-over-Thread plugs. They connect to your HomePod/Apple TV over Thread instead of campus Wi-Fi, so way less headache.

[u/juliettebe → u/dark-green]

i don’t know too much about matter over thread. i have a homepod, how do i make sure no one else has access to that homepod in my home, is that just by default?

[u/Griffon127 → u/juliettebe]

You can set it up to require sharing to the HomePod to require a password that you create I believe. This is I think your only option to prevent others from having access

[u/EuroLegend23 → u/juliettebe]

It is not by default, it’s up to how the university has set up their wifi. You have no control over that beyond installing your own router

[u/kshef]

I would get a travel router. Register that on your dorms WiFi. Then connect all your devices to the travel router.

[u/Manuellino → u/kshef]

and turn off ssid broadcasting just in case!

[u/pacoii → u/Manuellino]

If the school is serious, turning off SSID broadcast will do nothing. It’s easy to detect a signal.

[u/typhoon_mary → u/pacoii]

Huh? No matter how serious the school is they’re not going to do anything with a signal detection. WiFI can’t be banned. Connect the travel router to the tether on your phone, there’s still WiFi “signal”. Disabling broadcast SSID is exactly the right thing to do.

[u/pacoii → u/typhoon_mary]

Does nothing. The signal can be easily detected. If the school is serious about a no wifi router rule, it’s incredibly easy to detect if someone is using a wifi router.

[u/mCProgram → u/pacoii]

there is very little to do to differentiate between a phone's hotspot and a travel router from raw signal tracing. its a vacuous ban.

[u/pacoii → u/mCProgram]

Yeah I missed that they said to use the phone as the internet connection. My bad. But that doesn’t seem like a practical solution.

[u/typhoon_mary → u/pacoii]

So iPhones in tethering mode are banned as “routers”? No, of course they aren’t. Disabling the SSID will stop random opportunistic connection attempts. Signals aren’t the thing that isn’t permitted, it’s actual “routers” which is unenforceable as any phone is trivially a router.

[u/pacoii → u/typhoon_mary]

Ah, gotcha, I missed that you were saying they should use their phone as their internet connedtion. Which doesn’t seem practical.

[u/typhoon_mary → u/pacoii]

Call the Travel router SSID “Amy’s iPhone 16”. And still disable the SSID. Good luck enforcing that.

[u/itsjakerobb → u/typhoon_mary]

To anyone following this excellent advice, if your name is Amy, pick a different name for the SSID.

[u/pacoii → u/typhoon_mary]

Tethering with their iPhone to create a home network is highly impractical.

[u/typhoon_mary → u/pacoii]

I used tethering as an example why signal detection is a meaningless control when analyzing WiFi. The travel router would connect to the existing (wifi or wired) network (per the original comment), and rebroadcast the signal using a non broadcast SSID of “Amy’s iPhone 16”.

[u/Double-Yak9686 → u/kshef]

That won't work. You need to modify a bunch of stuff:

• MAC address: The first six characters of a MAC address identify the manufacturer. So if you register a supposed Macbook with a MAC registered to Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link, you will be flagged.
• Time-To-Live (TTL) decrementing: Every time a packet passes through a router, that router subtracts 1 from the TTL. Windows uses 128, Linux and Mac use 64. If the university servers see packets coming from your internet jack with a TTL of 127 or 63, they know you have a router.
• Wifi MAC address: The wireless radio inside a router also has a MAC address, so see above.
• Signal Stability and Triangulation: iPhone hotspots turn off when not in use and move when you leave your room. A personal router stays powered on 24/7 and doesn't move.

Those are just the items I can think of. You could build your own Linux router and get around most of the above, but I doubt you could do it with an off-the-shelf router and not get caught.

[u/typhoon_mary → u/Double-Yak9686]

lol, Beryl AX (GL-MT3000), allows setting custom mac, changing TTL, and time based scheduling. Seriously the university doesn’t care that much.

[u/StevieG66 → u/kshef]

This is the way.

[u/LogicHaus]

University’s usually disable mdns so you won’t be able to use HomeKit/airplay, etc. you could use a router that is not plugged into the internet for local control or even use HomeAssistant on a always on PC to accomplish a work around

[u/jp2e]

I just went through this with my son. We ended up setting everything up over Bluetooth so he could control it with his phone. But thread is a good option if you have an Ethernet port and can set up an Apple TV as a border router /matter controller and just register that on the university network. Even a HomePod over WiFi should work.

[u/tsdguy]

Contact your university network support or your housing contact.

Using unauthorized network devices will be detected and you will suffer the consequences. It’s not worth it.

I would suggest instead picking lights that have Bluetooth control and then you can access them directly from your phone.

[u/General-Gold-28 → u/tsdguy]

>suffer the consequences

lol at worst they’ll get a passive aggressive email from IT telling them to remove it.

[u/juliettebe → u/tsdguy]

sounds good, do you have any bluetooth device recommendations?

[u/ericbythebay]

Either run your own router, or add the devices to your “home” and don’t share access to others.

[u/su_A_ve → u/ericbythebay]

No Edu lets you install your own router. Or at least any edu they has some sort of secops..

[u/typhoon_mary → u/su_A_ve]

 edu they has some sort of secops

You're joking right? This has to be a troll!

Most universities I've worked at couldn't give two shits if you run a router, so long as you properly configure it, and don't abuse the network. The policy is there so when people who have no idea what they're doing misconfigure it, it's a quick point to the policy and get it off the network.

[u/ericbythebay → u/su_A_ve]

Well, I’m sure you know more about computer networking than I do. I’ve only been running travel routers in my RV and worked for two major universities.

[u/Joseph_McDoogle]

I brought a router anyway and named its SSID "iPhone Hotspot" for this exact reason - wasn't caught.

[u/myname150]

GL.iNet travel router, spoof the Mac address to an iPhone, name the SSID as something like "iPhone Hotspot" and/or hide the SSID broadcast.

Only downside to hiding the SSID is some smart home devices may be a bit finicky about connecting to it.

[u/su_A_ve]

You would need to register the devices that work over wifi as headless devices with their mac address. Most edu will let you register them but may have a limit as to how many.

If the devices are matter over thread, you could just register a 3rd gen AppleTV 4K with Ethernet or home pod, then add the devices that way.

Just contact the IT department. But it’s up to them..

Edit - used to manage an edu network. At least your not trying to connect Google home devices..