It is just your basic DHCP/DNS based captive system. A DHCP server gives private network addresses with a brain dead DNS resolver that wildcards almost everything to one destination. The VPN behind the SSID doesn't have to route anywhere off campus, and the allowed destinations are ACL restricted. There are twists like a reverse-proxy tunnel to the AV vendors update site etc...
<><Randy ________________________________ From: Angela K Hollman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 1:07 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Automating wireless configuration on clients I don't suppose you could elaborate on your help SSID. For instance, how does the redirection work? Is this like a captive portal type of page only the page just redirects to your registration/download system? We have been looking for ways to get our help site out to the students but we realize a help web site doesn't do any good without Internet access. _________________ Angela K. Hollman Information Technology Services Network Analyst (308)865-8176 Randall C Grimshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11/02/2007 09:24 AM Please respond to The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv <[email protected]> To [email protected] cc Subject Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Automating wireless configuration on clients We took a crack at this. What we found was that it is quite easy to do with Vista, but the variety of Vendor OEM wireless managers in use for XP and some nasty XP spyware frequently interfered with the tool. We are under the recent impression that the iD-Engines product has had a better success rate and we are considering using that. As a contingency we also have some development code using the Nicomsoft library which may someday have the functions we need. For Macintosh we created an applescript tool that loads a saved profile but there is no mechanism for saving that profiles credentials reliably, so we would get occasional calls that it didn't work. Up-to-date Macintosh systems configure themselves very easily without any tool. The current recommendation is to have the user update the OS and let the Connection Manager perform (and save) the configuration. Leopard may change that based on the initial feedback, but I suspect Apple has the ability to resolve these issues again. Rather than hike around with flash drives, we have a xxhelp SSID (where xx is our trademarked SSID) that is open but goes nowhere but the registration/download system. <><Randy ________________________________ From: Nathan Hay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 9:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Automating wireless configuration on clients We are researching ways to automate the creation of our SSID on a student's laptop via a script of some kind. Our technicians would pop in a flash drive, run the script from it, and the SSID with the needed 802.1X settings would be created. This would also serve as a way to "refresh" the configuration if the student configured the SSID incorrectly. We need to support XP, Vista, and Mac OS X. Has anyone done this before? Any suggestions on where to start? Nathan Nathan P. Hay Network Engineer Computer Services Cedarville University www.cedarville.edu <http://www.cedarville.edu/> ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
