Why can’t connect to my school's servers from my hospital’s network when I was able to connect from my hotel’s network?

Your school probably has some sort of VPN service available. VPN will create an encrypted tunnel between your machine and your school's servers. Try connecting to their VPN service and then try to SSH in. VPN connections will often be allowed where SSH won't.

BobT

Posted 2018-04-07T21:26:28.603

Reputation: 655

This might be a good suggestion in a comment, but it isn’t an answer since the original poster makes no indication they are even aware of what a VPN is. – JakeGould – 2018-04-07T22:03:45.570

@JakeGould It's a valid answer- AFAIK we don't assume knowledge or lack thereof on the part of the asker (unless stated). It could be improved by giving a bit of an explanation perhaps; but suggesting a connection via VPN is a valid answer- and answers should be in answers, not comments :) – bertieb – 2018-04-07T22:19:30.643

See also "Answers don't have to be exhaustive or infallible, they just need to try to answer the question. It's perfectly fine to post an answer saying, for example, "I'm not sure what the cause of your problem is, but if it's X, you can solve it by doing Y." in this meta A

– bertieb – 2018-04-07T22:19:59.653

1I know what a VPN is, but if my school has one, I don't know about it. – Living4God1991 – 2018-04-08T02:35:58.413

2You don't need to use your schools VPN - you can use any VPN which will bypass the hospital firewall restrictions – davidgo – 2018-04-08T07:50:18.233

@davidgo How are you so sure that this is a WiFi port blockage issue? – JakeGould – 2018-04-08T16:49:00.457

@bertieb The answer is short enough to be a helpful comment and is essentially a link only answer that is focused on the idea that somehow the school has a VPN that students can use this way. In summary, I have no issue with the brevity of this answer, but ultimately it’s not an answer because it’s presumptuous and that’s that. – JakeGould – 2018-04-08T16:50:56.737

1@jakegould - it stands to reason. He could connect from a public hotel network. This means it's unlikely to be a setup issue on his laptop or a firewall issue on the school lab network, so it must be something in between. Hospitals need to have the IT chops and incentive to control network access (HIPAA/equivalent legislation and general risk management ). It certainly could be something else - but it strikes me that hospital controls are by far the most likely reason because there would be no reason for the school to allow only part of the wider Internet. – davidgo – 2018-04-08T19:30:14.163

@davidgo I didn’t notice the hotel reference before. Sorry for the confusion. – JakeGould – 2018-04-09T00:07:01.063

Hotels typically have very different (read lax) security and/or policies than institutions. And "guest WiFis" are typically very limited no matter where they are. – None – 2018-04-07T21:35:23.170

First, unless you have successfully connected to your school’s Linux lab from outside their network before, my guess is nobody—not just you—can access this network off-campus. You most likely need VPN access and such. That said, you say, “The semester is almost over, so I really can't afford to fall behind.” I doubt your school will penalize you if they know you are hospitalized. I would expect they could work with you to made the project when you are out and better. – JakeGould – 2018-04-07T22:02:53.017

I have connected to the Linux Lab from outside the network before. I'm an online student, and my school lets their students remotely access the Linux Lab with SSH and SFTP. This is the first time I've had problems. – Living4God1991 – 2018-04-08T04:25:21.897

@user65209 Okay, all sounds solid now. I actually didn’t notice the “hotel” reference so that’s that. Will retract my close vote. – JakeGould – 2018-04-09T00:03:54.577