Create My Own Access Point With Unchanging Subnet

[Appellus]

I currently am attending University and living in residence, where they have a WPA2-Enterprise network that uses our uni email/password to validate, as well as a WPA2 PSK for non-enterprise devices. To connect to the non-enterprise network, you need to register the device's MAC address, then it assigns you a random password to login to the SSID. When I first tried to hook up my Google Home and Chromecast to the non-Enterprise network, I found myself usually unable to even get past set-up and when I did (rarely), my phones/tablets were unable to see them while on said non-enterprise network.

After some troubleshooting and asking around, I finally got a straight answer from the IT admin that it has to do with the fact the non-enterprise network utilizes a changing subnet. I'm not super literate on network lingo so I wasn't totally sure what that meant. I've looked around and it seems a possible solution would be to register my own router as an access point to the non-enterprise SSID and assign it a non-changing subnet, passing all the traffic through there and making it appear to the uni router that it is just traffic from one device. There's no rules against me setting this up and I would have it locked down so that only I would be able to attach devices to the ad-hoc router. Asking them to change their entire network strategy is a little out of the question given how large the campus is. Would this be possible/how would one even go about doing it? Apologies for the intro level post.

 

[Trip]

Hi Appellus, welcome.

First off, I'm surprised there isn't a rule forbidding you from standing up your own wifi network on campus, as that's usually a limitation at most schools these days. Presuming you are free to do so, I would do exactly that: use the university's wifi as your "internet" connection (commonly referred to as "Wifi-as-WAN") from a wireless router that is purpose-built to do so, or create your own setup with two pieces of hardware, by wiring a normal wireless router to a wireless access point that's been setup as wireless client bridge (ie. used solely to connect to the campus network). Presuming you'd be using the non-enterprise network, you'd need to authenticate the MAC address of the wireless radio used to make that main "internet" connection; you'd then connect all of your client devices (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.) to your wireless router's wifi network.

To make this as simple as possible, I would recommend an all-in-one router built specifically for Wifi-as-WAN, namely the Peplink Pepwave Surf SOHO ($199). If you look at page 32 in the user's manual, it shows you exactly how to fill in all the details for connection to the non-enterprise network as your "internet". You can then create your own separate wireless network on the Surf SOHO and join your devices to that, no more limitations to worry about.

Hope that helps give you proper guidance. Happy to clarify anything that may be confusing.

 

[dosborne]

You could also look into "travel" or "hotel" routers that connect to the hotel/educational environment and then allow your devices to connect to it, but as mentioned above, most educational systems discourage or restrict individual hotpoints due to the density of the WiFi interference.

I use a simple one when travelling that I configured with the same SSID that our devices use at home so our tablets, phones, etc don't require any configuration on the road.