UF Department of Housing and Residence Education

DHNet@Home is our new initiative that brings the services of the help desk closer to you. We have help desks located in the following areas: Broward and Hume. All you will need to do is bring your computer (desktop or laptop) to the desk with your Gator1 ID card. This is a free service and is available to all Housing residents in the residence halls and village housing. Please check the Hours of Operation page for more information.

Please come by one of our DHNet@Home locations during the normal hours of operation. You will need you machine and your Gator1 ID card. You can also call (352)392-2171 ext. 10191 during our phone support hours.

We list the Hours of Operation for all of our help desk locations on the Hours of Operation page.

Students living in single-student resident halls and Maguire/UVS/Diamond village residents are provided high-speed Internet access.

Currently, DHNet Wireless service is only available in the area commons and throughout Jennings Hall. Look for the SSID called "dhw" and make sure you follow the directions on the DHNet website for connecting to DHNet Wireless service.

DHNet is the Department of Housing and Residence Education computer network for residents. It includes all single-student residence halls and Maguire, University Village South, and Diamond Villages. DHNet provides wired and wireless high speed Internet access for its residents and a help desk program called DHNet@Home to help residents get connected.

The services provided by the DHNet@Home program are free to all residents living in the residence halls and villages.

Yes. The network is monitored for both malicious and/or illegal activity at all times. There is a restriction process for residents who violate the DHNet Acceptable Use Policies and the UF IT Acceptable Use Policy. Students are advised to follow the Student Conduct Code even when they are at home in the residence halls.

While there are always those out there with malicious intentions on the internet, the DHNet staff does its best to provide real-time protection for those who use our services. DHNet uses one of the most sophisticated and secure forms of authentication to keep non-UF Housing residents users off of our network.

This is not a DHNet related issue and the DHNet@Home desk staff cannot assist you. Please note that we do not provide a SMTP service as of Fall 2007. Relevant information and assistance is provided by the UF Computing Help Desk.

Viruses may cause a conflict with connecting to our network. DHNet@Home can assist you with the removing of viruses by taking your computer to one of our help desks. UF provides the McAfee VirusScan Enterprise Antivirus program free to all UF students. The UF Computing Help Desk can also assist you with removing viruses.

No, the addition of unauthorized infrastructure to DHNet is prohibited by the Acceptible Use Policy. The only village where the addition of routers is allowed is Diamond Village.

If you live in a village where outside Internet Service Providers are allowed, whether or not you can broadcast your connection is determined by the ISP.

We have compiled a list of compatible wireless network cards. You may find them here.

Corry village only has dhw coverage in the village commons. The wireless internet access for residents in their homes is provided by UFW. Questions and concerns regarding UFW coverage should be directed to the UF Computing Help Desk, at 352-392-HELP.

In Diamond Village, residents may connect through the port in their residences or may set up a wireless router to be shared within the residence.

Yes. This is the only residence facility where wireless routers are permitted. For setup assistance, please call the DHNet@Home Phone Support line.

You will be redirected to a page that informs you of the service restriction when trying to visit any non-UF websites. You will need to enter your Gatorlink username and password to continue. If you are being restricted because of P2P software use, you will see a page explaining the violation. Read carefully through this information, disable any infringing software, and click "I will comply" if you will comply. After complying, your internet access will be restored within 30 minutes.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) outlines prohibitions regarding unauthorized use (including distribution) of literary/artistic works in digital form. DHNet staff often receive outside complaints from legal officials indicating that a person using the DHNet network is violating the copyright on a specific “work.” A complaint contains technical evidence of a download from a location on the DHNet network that allows for identification of the user via the public information contained within the download. When DHNet Network Administration staff receive such a complaint, this information is referred to the Coordinator of Residential Judicial Programs in the Main Housing Office and the student is contacted by email.

This type of violation is an automatic level 3 and the student in violation is immediately restricted to viewing only UFL.EDU websites. The student is required to contact the office for the Coordinator of Residential Judicial Programs to set up a meeting in order to regain full access to the Internet. The Coordinator for Residential Judicial Affairs determines the length of the restriction and then notifies the DHNet Network Administration staff.

P2P (or peer-to-peer) filesharing is a network model in which files are stored on and served by individual home computers. P2P networks provide many different types of content both legal and illegal. For reasons of copyright and bandwidth, most P2P filesharing is prohibited on DHNet including Gnutella (LimeWire, WinMX, BearShare, Morpheus, Acquisition) and Bittorrent (Ares,eDonkey, eMule, Azureus, BitComent).

Yes, some games such as World of Warcraft distribute updates through various Peer-to-peer protocols. You will need to find an alternative way to get these patches. Some other programs that also exhibit this behaviour can be be found here.

You can find information about the P2P violation levels by looking over the Restriction Process.

The third violation requires you to speak to a judicial staff member. From the Restriction Process:

"The third time the user has an alleged DHNet violation, the restriction will be in place until the user meets with a judicial staff member in the Department of Housing and Residence Education. During this meeting, an extended restriction of DHNet services may be assigned based on the resolution of the situation. Other official action may also be taken that is noted on the user’s official UF judicial record including the recording of information about any other DHNet incidents."

An IRC Bot is an autonomous program that often threatens the integrity of a network. To maintain the security and reliability of DHNet, users found with IRC Bots running on their computers are blocked from connecting to the network. This is not a P2P violation but instead a restriction that lasts until the IRC Bot programs are removed. The UF Computing Help Desk can assist with removing the IRC Bots from the machines. Please note that DHNet@Home locations are not permitted to remove these bots. If you receive an email from DHNet@Home regarding an IRC Bot, it is in your best interest to get this taken care of immediately.

Illegal file sharing is just that, illegal. Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may be more lax about this topic than others, but DHNet is primarily an academic network and is responsible for ensuring that it is used for academic purposes. The University of Florida is partially held accountable for every violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) committed on its network and faces sharp penalties for each offense. For this reason, DHNet reminds all residents that illegal file sharing (illegally sharing and illegally downloading) is prohibited on the network.

Any modern computer from a major vendor should work with our services. If you are worried it will not work (ie. if it is used and not made recently) check with the seller to make sure it has an ethernet port and a compatible operating system. Please check with the University of Florida's Academic Technology requirements and recommendations for more information.

In short, most modern operating systems: Windows XP SP2 or later, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and later, and most major Linux distributions (for Ubuntu users, we recommend at least Hardy Heron 8.04). DHNet Internet Services is compatible with any operating system that supports PEAP authentication over 802.1x security protocol.

These are most likely ad-hoc networks set up by other people in the residence halls or nearby. Connecting to these can be a hazardous to your computer because you don’t know who might be connecting through the network to your computer. Also hackers will setup fake access points so that they can gain access to your credentials therefore it’s best to only connect to published UF and Housing wireless access points (WAPs).

DHW is the DHNet's wireless system and is administered by the Department of Housing and Residence Education. UFW is part of the campus network and is not controlled by the Department of Housing and Residence Education. DHW uses the authentication standard 802.1X which encrypts your credentials for increased security.

Due to the nature of wireless networks, the connection speed is based on the distance from the Wireless Access Point (WAP) and the amount of users connecting to the WAP.

No, all that is required to connect is an Ethernet cord which can be found at your local computer accessories dealer or electronics store.

The DHNet Connection CD contains software that sets up all the correct settings on your computer and tries to correct all incompatible settings. It does not install anything on your computer and we don't require you to have any applications installed in order to connect to the DHNet network. The DHNet Connection CD is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X on Intel. The DHNet Connection CD will not work with Linux at this time.

All new residents should receive a DHNet Connection CD during check-in. Additionally, all RAs are provided DHNet Connection CDs to lend to their residents. The area offices also have copies they can lend to students.

On any Windows computer, the software will start when the CD is entered. From there, follow the instructions on the screen. If the AutoConnect program does not start automatically, click My Computer on Windows XP or Computer on Windows Vista and select the CD drive with the AutoConnect logo.

P2P programs are not allowed on the DHNet network and will cause a restriction. The Connection CD will not continue until these programs have stopped running.

The DHNet Connection CD will not continue until there are no running P2P programs. If the DHNet Connection CD does not work, there may be an incompatibility on your computer that the CD does not see. To get connected if the CD does not work, contact us.

The manufacturers of these consoles did not include an 802.1X supplicant and until they do, an internet connection sharing situation is required for internet connectivity on these consoles.

Currently, only computers are allowed to connect to DHNet. This improves the overall security of the network. With hardware like routers, switches, and hubs, it is impossible to identify who is connecting to the network.

Most laptops will only have one ethernet port. To use Internet Connection Sharing, you will need to get a second Ethernet port. USB, PMCIA and Express Card adapters are available to add a second Ethernet port.

Yes! We have no policy against computer video games. However, you will not be able to host an online game as this is acting as a server (see our policies regarding acting as a server).

You can play World of Warcraft. However, larger WoW patches are distributed through the Bittorrent protocol, which is not allowed on the DHNet network (see our policies regarding acting as a server). For these patches, you will need to find an alternative way to get the patch.