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bureaucracy
and
other
things
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Universities have the means and the money to implement computerdevelopment properly. So they go far in bureaucracy as well. The tiny little details that other people usually don't bother with.
An internet provider is a profit organisation and therefore is quite content to have their IP address labelled with the address of the phone-exchange where the equipment is that connects to their customers.
Under certain circumstances, these IP addresses can be assigned to one customer one day, and to another customer on another day. This is called dynamic IP allocation and the IP addresses can change owner. It is unlikely, but possible. In any case, to ensure that the locations that correspond with the users of the IP addresses are always accurate, new equipment and software would be necessary to track these changes and apply them real-time.
Since an internet provider is usual a profit organisation, they will not bother and just stick with the central address where that list of IP addresses is registered, and leave it at that.
You could say that you have a small internet provider in your building that branches out connections to each student that lives there. It is likely that they will have a list of IP addresses registered for that specific building. Therefore it is likely this is the reason that your IP address places you at your building's address exactly.
Universities tend to require bigger and better connections. And they have the money to buy them and maintain them. Usually for administrative and technical reasons they will choose for static IP addresses - they are always the same. You may recall that you had to provide your MAC address in order to gain access to the internet in your building. This is partially to prevent people from hooking up a dozen computers running all sorts of illegal software sharing programs, but mainly for administrative reasons - there is likely to be only one IP address reserved per student in your building. The MAC address of your laptop is (supposed to be) unique. So they know your name, location, MAC address and IP address. All this information is then bundled into their own little database, some of which is available publicly - for example, searching for your IP address on the internet would likely use that part of the information stored in the university database to find out your address.
Note; This is speculation on my part for most of the story I just wrote. But I'm convinced I'm not far from reality.
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(VISITOR) AUTHOR'S NAME
NovaFlash
MESSAGE TIMESTAMP
22 november 2007, 21:37:26
AUTHOR'S IP LOGGED
127.0.0.1
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