In a process like this what is usually done is, the university leases a high bandwidth service from some ISP. The university has it's own LAN (local area network) that usually includes all the class, office, library computers etc. Everyone in the LAN connects to the server and server authenticates the user and if he has enough authorization he can access the internet from the LAN. This routing is directed by the server and obviously you can not know about the actual configuration. But it is fairly simple to guess using common sense. If you are living and going to school from a developed country, and the university is fairly large, it has leased a few T1 lines or a T3 line. A full T1 line can connect at 1,544k and costs only about 600 us dollars per month. Whereas, a T3 line can transmit data at 44.746 Megabits per second (Mbps). But it's much much more costly.
Another way to find out about the university network is do some good hearted hacking with the university domain names, mail server etc.
I remember telneting into our university's mail server and then send email from
clinton@whitehouse.gov lol. Such things are getting trickier though these days.
Hope that helps. Now if you'd tell us the exact purpose of the information, we could help you better.
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