Winthrop University Campus Network Guidelines

These guidelines apply to equipment and network ports located in faculty/staff offices and labs, Residence Halls, and other University facilities.

1. The Winthrop University Campus Network may only be used in a manner consistent with local, state, and federal laws.  The Winthrop University Campus Network must also be used in a manner consistent with existing University policies including policies dealing with appropriate use of information technology, copyrighted material, academic conduct, and sexual harassment.  Users shall not make or use illegal copies of copyrighted materials, store such copies on university systems, or transmit them over university networks.
2. Tampering with any university owned network equipment (or any other university owned technology equipment) is expressly forbidden. Students who tamper with equipment, network wiring, wire closets, network jacks, or wireless access points are subject to disciplinary action and may be subject to criminal prosecution resulting from vandalism.  Expenses due to damage to residence hall network equipment may also be charged to a student's account if living in a residence hall.
3. Any activity that may be construed as hacking, snooping, or spoofing is expressly forbidden.
4. Campus e-mail users must not release other users' e-mail addresses in a manner that compromises privacy.  Recipients listed in the TO and CC fields of an e-mail can see each other's address. This is inappropriate when the recipients are not already aware of that information. When sending an e-mail to multiple recipients who need to remain private, the recommended method is to use the BCC (blind courtesy copy) field or to use a private listserv.
5. Installation of any device (other than personal clients) on the Winthrop University campus that uses licensed or unlicensed frequencies that coincide with frequencies used by wireless technology equipment owned by Winthrop University must be authorized by the Department of Computing and Information Technology.  Winthrop University allow the installation of personal access points only in locations that are not already served by university provided wi-fi.  If personal access points are installed, security must be set (no open access points); the SSID must not refer to Winthrop University in any manner; and the device must be configured correctly such that the device does not provide services on the campus network.
6. Winthrop University network connections may be configured by any user only if the connection uses DHCP to obtain the IP address. The use of a static IP address without authorization from the Department of Computing and Information Technology is inappropriate, and may result in loss of network access from the offending port.
7. Services must not be hosted from computers without authorization from the Department of Computing and Information Technology. Examples include, but are not limited to, web services, externally accessible telnet and ftp services, mail services, and file-sharing services. If a computer is utilizing DDNS for remote accessibility, then it is hosting services and must be authorized by the Department of Computing and Information Technology. Servers, server appliances, and other equipment that provides services may not be installed on the Winthrop University network without authorization from the Department of Computing and Information Technology.
8. Methods must not be employed to maintain persistent connections through the Network Address Translation (NAT) system to keep an external IP address presence.  The NAT system is in place to allow a limited number of external IP addresses to be shared by the entire campus community.  Persistent connections are unfair to other users by monopolizing the NAT system thereby preventing other users from gaining access to external IP connections.  Logical connections to off-campus network resources should be maintained only when the user is present and actively engaged in use of that resource. Logical connections to off-campus network resources should be closed when not in use.  
9. All privately owned computers (such as student owned computers in the residence halls) must have current up-to-date antivirus software installed and active if the computer is connected to the campus network.  All computers must remain updated with their operating system (e.g. Windows Update).  All computers must remain cleaned of spyware through periodic scanning to reduce generation of unintended traffic and data transmission.
10. All University owned computers must have the current Winthrop approved antivirus software installed.
11. Methods must not be employed to misclassify or conceal network traffic in order to bypass campus firewalls, authentication controls, or classification mechanisms.  The use of http tunneling to route non-http traffic, for example, is not permitted. MAC address spoofing is expressly prohibited. Bridging or otherwise sharing a university provided network connection on the wired or wireless network is not permitted.

Violations of these guidelines cause disruptions in service to other users, and may result in disciplinary action.

Questions regarding these guidelines should be directed to Patrice Bruneau, the Assistant Vice President for Computing and Information Technology, 803/323-2148, bruneaup@winthrop.edu.