Alright, so I'm at college, and in order to access the internet I must go through a certain program (Cisco Clean Access Agent). Now, normally connecting a ps3 through the internet here would be a lost cause. However, there is a way to do it. The Cisco Clean Access Agent still registers you as logged in after a short disconnection - e.g., five minutes or so. If a connection is registered before five minutes after disconnecting with the same properties as the device it was disconnected from, it will continue the connection as normal.

Simply put, if my PS3 has the same identification as my computer, I will be able to simply plug the ethernet cord from my computer into my PS3 and viola - online.

This is where I run into problems. I have looked up all my settings using ipconfig /all. I set my IP address to the one displayed, set up subnet mask etc. DNS servers, my computer doesn't exactly display just a primary and secondary, but three different addresses, so therefore I just put in a random two and have switched them around. However, each time I try to connect, it says Obtain IP Address : Succeeded, but an error occurred during communication with the server. (DNS error). Anyone know why this is happening?

It does use my MAC address as verification. I don't have a router currently, but I'll see what I can do and get back to you. Thanks!

I'm also in college and we also use clean access. All i had to do was go to the IT department and give them my PS3's MAC address and they opened a port for it to bypass clean access.