Help me fight the draconian policies of my evil IT Department

[stVal]

Hi everyone,

The IT department of my college has recently taken the concept of secure internet to the next level, where it happens to cross the limit between what is sensible and utterly absurd. Basically, in order to connect to the internet from my room I had to install Bradford Persistent Agent along with other "internet security" applications which monitor my traffic and block a variety of websites that the IT department considers a security liability. Moreover, the security software has significantly slowed down my ageing machine. So I bought a brand new laptop with the aim of sharing my connection on the old machine with the new machine, which would in theory circumvent the need to install those internet security applications on the new machine.

Sorry for such a long intro, I'm just furious.

I have a wired connection and a wireless card on the old machine and I have set up an ad-hoc wireless connection to the new machine. To my great disappointment I've just discovered that as soon as I enable the network sharing, my internet connection is shut down by Bradford Persistent Agent. What alternatives do I have?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Valeria

Edited October 8, 2008 by stVal

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

if you dont like the policies your institution has implemented you dont have to use their network. the network was not implemented for the type of use you want it to do so even if you did get around it youre just denying another student of a quality internet connection. almost every policy (no matter how 'draconian') has been put in place for a reason. its as simple as that.

[cluberti]

I'd say your best bet is to use the network as-is, but get in (if possible) with the network admins at your residence or the IT dept. You'll find that there's really not going to be a technical fix to this, but a social angle is a much better option. Otherwise, what geek said is pretty much spot-on.

[eyeball]

Use your new machine to Run a Virtual Machine, and in that virtual machine install all of this "evil" software - problem solved!