I'm a student too... and I find it extremenly useful to have access to my home PC. I have my work backed up... but, I have a lot of software/tools that I like to use that my school doesn't have. I'm not admin there... so installing is out of the question. not to mention a 100mb quota! Email is included in that 100mb quota too... bunch of crap if you ask me. (I found out though... one of their SSH boxes doesn't have a quota... so, I just store all my data there.)

Everyone says... don't try to do this or that on a network that isn't yours. Well... I don't. I just log in via VPN or Terminal Services to my home box where I'm unrestricted. I don't see how that would violate any policy...

Fortunately for me... my school doesn't block much outbound. However... they have to allow SOME ports out. Look into well known and used ports. Port 80 or 443 should def be open unless they are using a proxy on a different port. 8080 or 8000 is common.

Depending on your privledges... you can use netstat to watch what ports are being used when you open a webpage.