6 ms·
At my college, we have an airgapped network for security classes, and when assignments are due, we often run out of ethernet cables. I had just mentioned I woul
by ollien 7y ago
At my college, we have an airgapped network for security classes, and when assignments are due, we often run out of ethernet cables. I had just mentioned I would bring a switch with me the next day and people were confused why I'd be goofing off with a Switch so close to the deadline.
Now we can avoid that kind of confusion! :)
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> when assignments are due, we often run out of ethernet cables. I had just mentioned I would bring a switch with me the next day As I understand it, a switch will solve a shortage of ethernet ports, but will make the cable problem worse by requiring one extra cable. What's the purpose of the switch here?
- Enginerrrd 7y agoshorter total cable length and a less cluttered environment?
- gberger 7y agoSure, but that doesn't solve the problem of shortage of ethernet cables
- m12k 7y agoIf the shortage is not of cables in general, but of cables that are long enough to reach the current connection point, then a switch would help.
- wlesieutre 7y agoMaybe they have plenty of short cables, but not enough long cables to get to each person from the main network switch. Adding a switch closer to you means multiple people can share the one long cable.
- 24gttghh 7y agoI'd presume anyone bringing a network switch with them to class would also have some Cat5e kicking around. Otherwise, what good is the switch doing them?
- singlow 7y agoRunning out of cables may actually mean running out of ports. Spare cables with no place to plug in are useless.
- laughinghan 7y agoI think they mean out of ethernet-cables-that-are-usable-to-get-network-access. So there's loose cables aplenty, but a shortage of cables that work in the sense of the far end being plugged in, due to a shortage of ports. From the perspective of a student walking into the room with their laptop, that's a shortage of cable-ends that they can plug into their laptop to gain network access.
- randogogogo 7y agoEither way, I'm surprised port security isn't enabled in an educational environment like this.
- leetrout 7y agoIt probably is and they just don't know or the policy is lax enough to allow it but triggers an alarm in OIT.
- tomjen3 7y agoWhy should it be, or even be detectable if OP attaches a switch? Afaik, those don't even have different MACs and even if they do, it is unlikely that the university has all the students laptops MACs.
- andykx 7y agoSwitches have MAC addresses.
- taneq 7y agoThey might have people in a couple of different rooms, and plenty of short Ethernet cables but not enough long ones. So a switch allows them to run one cable between rooms and use a bunch of shorter cables within the room.
- greggman2 7y agoswitches route traffic to other machines on the same switch lowering network congestion between those machines and the rest of the network right ?
- robohoe 7y agoYes. They also minimize the broadcast storm domain.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago...no they don't. STP will help prevent broadcast storms, but a switch does nothing in and of itself to stop them.
- walrus01 7y agoIf your college has any proper security on access ports, they'll be limited to one MAC address per physical port, and hopefully a decent 802.1x setup
- tinco 7y agoWhy would 1 mac per port be proper security? Seems needlessly restrictive and ineffective to me.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoNAT for IPs may be everywhere, but NAT for MAC addresses is inconceivable.
- mercora 7y agoif you use a cheap router instead of a switch the far end will only see one MAC address which is the one of the router. doing NAT then is as easy as it could be. You could literally use just about any router out of the box without even configuring anything. you can also add an ethernet switch behind this device easily. only limiting a port to a single MAC is therefore somewhat pointless. you would prohibit valid use cases (adding a switch) without hindering any nefarious user (guy with a cheap router). Also, NAT for MAC addresses is a thing although not necessarily the most useful approach in this case...
- jrockway 7y agoA lot of people think trusted L3 is a valid security solution.
- jlgaddis 7y ago> an airgapped network for security classes
- Godel_unicode 7y agoWait till he finds out that people frequently use multiple VMs with their own MAC addresses on a given physical box. Especially in the kind of lab where people are working on security projects. Edit: or that security includes availability in addition to confidentiality and integrity
- bitwize 7y agoYeah, I saw a story titled "The Nintendo Switch" on Hackernews back in October 2016 and thought, "Nintendo is getting into network hardware now?!"
- lonelappde 7y agoDoes your college teach security before networking? Probably a smart choice.
- SenHeng 7y agoSimilar story, I've been looking into getting ethernet switches to wire up my home and my initial search for switches turned up the console. It is annoying when companies name their product after a commonly used word. Even more so if both are equally popular.