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Rules For Computing and Networking in UW Housing

The University of Washington provides digital networking capacity to campus housing owned by the UW for the purpose of facilitating student academic activity, whether or not such activity is directly related to formal course work. The services are limited by both policy and cost considerations: there are restraints on acceptable use as stated in law and UW policy, and there are inevitable restrictions based on the cost of providing network service.

Specifically, these are guidelines you need to know about and follow if you compute in a networked residence:

  1. You MAY set up private servers for your personal use for class projects, do local file sharing, or run other applications within the educational scope of the UW as long as these file servers do not violate UW Technology or University of Washington policies.

  2. You MAY NOT use network connections in UW housing to provide any service that is visible off campus (i.e., available on the global Internet). This applies to services such as, but not limited to, HTTP (Web), telnet, FTP, IRC, and email. (Note that you MAY set up public services visible off campus using the servers provided on the UW Technology Uniform Access computers, provided your use complies with UW Technology guidelines.)

  3. You MAY NOT use applications that consume disproportionate bandwidth, attempt denial-of-service attack(s), probe and/or exploit security holes in other systems, use unauthorized IP addresses, or otherwise degrade or restrict network access for others (either on or off campus). If UW Technology receives complaints about or detects inappropriate behavior, your network connection will be disabled. You may also be subject to account suspension as well as University disciplinary and/or legal action.

  4. You MAY NOT configure your computer to provide Internet or UW network/ system access to anyone who is not a UW faculty or staff member or student. Also, you are responsible for what your roommates or friends do with your computer connection to the UW network. UW Technology has implemented technical methods designed to help enforce some of these policies and to regulate the consumption of network resources within UW Housing. These technical methods currently include (but are not necessarily limited to):

    • Blocking access from off campus to specific services usually used for servers.
    • Limiting total network bandwidth from the Residence Halls to off campus destinations to 200 megabits per second.
    • Further limiting inbound traffic on specific peer-to-peer applications to 20 megabits per second and outbound traffic to 2 megabits per second.

  5. You MAY NOT copy or use any software, images, music, or other intellectual property (such as books or videos) unless you have the legal right to do so. Unauthorized use of software, images, music, or files is regarded as a serious matter and any such use is without the consent of the University of Washington. If abuse of computer software, images, music, or files occurs, those responsible for such abuse will be held legally accountable.

Questions about these policies may be addressed to help@u.washington.edu