While the primary purpose of the Thomas network is to support academic activities, Thomas does not prohibit the use of the residential network for gaming and audio/video streaming, provided these activities do not interfere with the primary purposes of the network.

If you are interested in using the residential network for gaming and/or video streaming, there are a few things you should know:

1. We require that all game consoles use a wired connection.
2. Rename your device by adding your username to the name of your device to help us identify you if there is a problem, for example: SmithJ-XBOX or SmithJ-PS5

   For Xbox: Settings, System, Console Info, Name (enter new name)

   For PS5: Settings, Users and Accounts, Account, Profile, Online ID (enter new name)

3. See which devices are banned or problematic on our network.



4. Thomas does not specifically block any of the ports used by internet gaming servers.



5. Computers on the Thomas network use private IP addresses which are translated into public IP addresses by our firewall in order to connect to the internet. This is a popular security mechanism known as Network Address Translation or NAT. Most internet games work quite well via NAT, but there may be some games or other internet software that does not work over NAT.



6. Thomas supports most Internet-based applications on the residential network that work over a NAT connection. (The Thomas network does not support, for example, Xbox direct connections to off-campus users.)



7. Thomas does not allow SlingBox or other similar audio/video streaming content servers to operate from the network, for more information see the Acceptable Use Policy.