Incoming TCP connections in campus housing

To help protect student computers from hackers, viruses, and Trojans, UITS blocks incoming TCP connections to campus housing (residence halls and apartments) at Indiana University Bloomington and IU Indianapolis.

This protective measure is not noticeable for most students. From campus housing you can connect outward to any address you like, and the return network traffic will be allowed. Only computers attempting to be open servers will be affected.

If you are a student and you wish to connect to your campus housing computer from the Student Technology Center (STC) computers for remote desktop or SSH access, you can create a VPN connection to the campus VPN server from the remote computer and these protocols will be allowed through to your personal computer. (In Windows STCs, a utility is available for creating a VPN connection to the campus VPN server; you can find it on the Start menu under Communications.)

If you are a student in the residence halls and you have an academic need to run a computer program that acts like a server, you can ask a faculty member to support your request for an exception by sending email on your behalf to Campus Network Engineering.