dealing with the uni network

[McCloud]

Hey guys,

 

so recently I moved in to the university. There is one 'technical' problem that I am having though. The network has very restrictive rules - I am not 100% sure, but based on what I tried, the firewall blocks almost all the traffic except internet (port 80) - so no ftp, rdp, vpn, proxies. Of course many of the websites are blocked too, as well as torrenting (obviously). 

I don't care that much about the latter, but I would need ftp and vpn quite a lot. 

 

There are several ways I could go about this - VPN, SSH tunnel or Tor is what I was thinking. From these three I tried VPN which is blocked apparently. I am not sure if I'd be able to configure Tor to route all my traffic (not only internet browsing) through it's nodes. I think SSH tunnel would be optimal, as long as I could configure it through port 443 (which should be open in the uni firewall). 

I would need to connect to a VPS (or any remote machine) - Windows, for convenience. But I am not sure about this whole procedure. I've never actually configured a SSH tunnel. 

 

Could you give me any suggestion/tips? What would you do in this case?

 

Thanks

[Valandil]

I'd check the uni and accommodation rules before doing anything

if their blocking it they clearly don't  want you to use it and some uni's kick people out or block your internet access for using stuff they don't want you to.

 

as for tor, the uni will be monitoring your internet port and i wouldn't recommend it while on a uni campus and it will be slow anyway so it probably wont be good for vpn or ftp

[ross06187]

SSH is by far your safest legitimate option.

 

if you want to configure a ssh just watch you-tube, its your best bet.

 

you will need a computer on the out side world  to do this.

 

1. a computer at home that's always own.

2. rent a virtual server, will cause you about $10 a month

 

UNI do this stuff for a reason, most to try to,

1. stop illegal activity

2, keep network traffic down as the infrastructure just wont be there for the density of people.

 

so they will likely come looking for you if you use 500% more bandwidth than others for example

[McCloud]

Thanks for the answer ross. I completely understand why the uni is blocking it (although I think they are a bit exaggerated here in UK).

 

I already watched some tutorials on ssh. I will try to set up a SSH through port 443 and will see if I can connect through remote desktop that way. 

I was looking for some free VPS online, but it's all just scam and bs - again, I understand that nothing comes for free. But I cannot afford to pay for a service if I am not sure that it works in the first place.

[McCloud]

Hey,

I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out, but I would really need some help. 
Just for testing purposes I've set up two virtual machines - a server and a PC - connected internally.
I've set up a SSH tunnel, using FreeSSHd and Putty. Yesterday I managed to get a connection successfully, but today it doesn't work anymore, saying access is denied after I enter the username and password. I am using the option 'Password stored as SHA1 hash' on the server, because for NT authentication, the option to enter a password wasn't there. I don't get this. The firewall is turned off for the moment. 
It's kind of frustrating, because only yesterday it worked.

Can you help me out? I can provide any additional info if necessary. 
Thanks