I don't blame OIT for firewalling the reshall. There are very few legit reasons a "workstation" should be listening on ports and "need" the ability to accept incoming connections. I know I am going to get flamed for this, so I invite justifications on why one feels they are entitled to a unfirewalled connection. I will go ahead and list a few *legit* reasons I can think of...
1) A student is taking a networking course and would like to test thier applications. They start up a server process on thier workstation, and attempt to connect to it from an off campus computer. This would not work. Solution, use two computers in a computer lab on the same local network.
2) A student attempts to connect to a service that requires identd. Solution, find an alternate server that does not require identd (i.e. use a different IRC server).
3) A students runs a FTP/HTTP/SMTP/BLAH...BLAH server and nobody from the outside world can connect to it!!! Solution? Pay for colocated server space! It is a reshall network, not a datacenter! :)
Sorry to go on a rant, but sometimes I think people expect a bit too much from thier reshall connection.
Peter
I agree it is a shame that the dorms are now firewalled and I also think that it would have better if they had shut people off on an individual basis. But Even though they did shut everyone down and check everyone individually, they are still having problems with the worm. As far as I know, they are still working on the equipment over there, so maybe you won't be firewalled forever. Realize this though. Even though you may be in the "tech" wing you are still a minority when it comes to patching, upgrading, and actual understanding of computers. You should realize this by how inept your roommate probably is.
Erik