Introduction

It's back to school time and some college campus network administrators are finding they have their hands full trying to control the wave of network problems caused by students' use of inexpensive wired and wireless routers connected to their networks.

Students are bringing their routers to campus and connecting them to the campus network, often in violation of their school's Computing or Networking policy. The results aren't pretty from a network administrator's view and are causing big problems for both users and the folks who keep the networks humming.

In this NeedToKnow, I'll show you the problems that an improperly connected and configured router can cause with a campus network. I'll also describe how to connect up the right way, and save your network administrators, fellow students, and yourself a lot of hassle.