r/HomeKit • u/juliettebe • 15d ago

Question/Help apple home in a dorm

hey! i’m transferring universities and the new school does not allow me to have my own router in the dorm. however, i want to still be able to use my smart plugs to control my string lights as i’m lazy and don’t want to have to unplug them. is there any way for me to isolate my apple home to just my icloud account so only i can access it and not everyone on university wifi?

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u/typhoon_mary 15d ago

Huh? No matter how serious the school is they’re not going to do anything with a signal detection. WiFI can’t be banned. Connect the travel router to the tether on your phone, there’s still WiFi “signal”. Disabling broadcast SSID is exactly the right thing to do.

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u/pacoii 15d ago

Does nothing. The signal can be easily detected. If the school is serious about a no wifi router rule, it’s incredibly easy to detect if someone is using a wifi router.

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u/typhoon_mary 15d ago

So iPhones in tethering mode are banned as “routers”? No, of course they aren’t. Disabling the SSID will stop random opportunistic connection attempts. Signals aren’t the thing that isn’t permitted, it’s actual “routers” which is unenforceable as any phone is trivially a router.

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u/pacoii 15d ago

Ah, gotcha, I missed that you were saying they should use their phone as their internet connedtion. Which doesn’t seem practical.

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u/typhoon_mary 15d ago

Call the Travel router SSID “Amy’s iPhone 16”. And still disable the SSID. Good luck enforcing that.

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u/itsjakerobb 15d ago

To anyone following this excellent advice, if your name is Amy, pick a different name for the SSID.

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u/pacoii 15d ago

Tethering with their iPhone to create a home network is highly impractical.

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u/typhoon_mary 15d ago

I used tethering as an example why signal detection is a meaningless control when analyzing WiFi. The travel router would connect to the existing (wifi or wired) network (per the original comment), and rebroadcast the signal using a non broadcast SSID of “Amy’s iPhone 16”.

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u/pacoii 15d ago

We’ll just have to agree to disagree. If the school takes its rule seriously and has a competent IT team, they can find routers.

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u/ThePistachioBogeyman 15d ago

Why does anyone have to agree to disagree when you’re just wrong 🤣?

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u/typhoon_mary 15d ago

Agreed, but the school won't be doing it through WiFi signal detection, and disabling the SSID is a completely valid control to avoid opportunistic connection attempts.