Overview/Introduction
This article will help students looking to expand the number of ports in their room by knowing what the Ursinus IT team recommends to look for in a network switch when purchasing one.
Most dorm rooms are allotted a single network port per room. This is due to the growing prevalence of wi-fi adoption, and space on our equipment rack for these physical connections, thus we have limited the number of network ports in each room to one; and unfortunately cannot expand the number of ports if occupants of a room have more than one device they wish to connect physically to the network.
However, students are allowed to purchase a small network switch of their own in order to expand the number of connections to devices to that single port in their room. We do however, have some recommended guidelines to follow so the correct network switch can be purchased.
What we recommend
When looking for a switch we at Ursinus IT recommend making sure that no matter how many ports the switch may have, that they should all support gigabyte speeds. There are very few out there now a days that don't have all their ports supporting gigabyte speed but sometimes a switch might only support gigabyte speeds on only one or two ports and not across all of them. So just make sure to read the description thoroughly before you make a purchase
Make sure that the switch is an unmanaged switch, or a dumb switch as we like to call it. A managed switch usually will have extra bells a whistles like vlan assignment, or a management software component to it. Do not purchase this switch because as soon as you try to plug it in, the port will be automatically disabled by our equipment.
NOTE: There will be no exceptions to allow a managed switch to connect to the Ursinus network.
Here is a cheap, but good Unmanaged Network Switch that we recommend to purchase for under $20.
Switches are allowed, but not a router?
We allow students to bring and connect unmanaged network switches to the Ursinus Network because they should only be forwarding traffic through the network. However this article will explain why we don't allow students to bring in and connect a wireless router to the Ursinus Network.
Still Having Trouble?
If you are having trouble with your wired connection try these troubleshooting steps, otherwise you are welcome to submit a service request for help with your issue through this link.