I’m grateful to be in a place to network from now, however even with that university’s “networking seminars” none of their partnered companies gave either my classmates nor I any leads. I remained in touch with my classmates until each caved in going back to their original industry
No if you’re doing that, use a VPN through your firewall. Local traffic is a fair exception as this can only ever be a device on your network, but that depends on your threat model (as those local devices could be compromised). Opening to “your region’s” IP range opens you to a lot more than LAN access…