At school we have a paltry 22 IP addresses for wired ethernet connections. We can work around this using wireless, but the reception isn’t great, and we sometimes copy large files to/from our Windows “server”.
Is there a hub/switch/gizmo that we can plug into the wall that will do NAT for us so we don’t run out of IPs and have to resort to wifi?
This would need to be innocuous and something that wouldn’t draw the attention of the IT people.
A home or small office internet router should work. Plug the WAN port into the school’s network port and use the LAN ports for the local devices. If you need more than the 3-4 LAN ports most routers provide, get an unmanaged switch, connect 1 port to a router LAN port and all devices to the remaining switch ports.
That presumes adding such hardware does not violate your school’s IT security policies.
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Depending on the setup this may be impossible. The university I work disallows auch things unless you have explicit permission, and shuts down ports of anything they detect breaking these rules instantly. Of course, if they’re a smaller setup or very relaxed they may not do this, just something to keep in mind though 
(We have about 40,000 people to deal with, hence strict rules, I’d guess your school is smaller and perhaps they can be more relaxed? If you haven’t asked them for something like this though I would!)
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Thanks for the replies.
I’ll err on the side of caution and not do anything.
As long as I get in the lab early, it’s usually not s problem. Just a sometimes annoyance.
Thanks again!