We are EAP-PEAP compliant, and had gone down the route of documenting
setup instructions for as many os' as we could think of; including
phones, linux (top 5 distros each month), windows, mac etc. However
we found this wasn't sufficient to meet student's expectations for "it
to just work, like at home" and our helpdesk and the network team were
spending a lot of time configuring laptops manually. So we opted for
Cloudpath XpressConnect in september 2009 and it has reduced HelpDesk
visits; as well as making it a lot easier for those for whom English
is not a native language. I still maintain instructions, as there is
always space for those, but I do think XpressConnect is cost effective.
Our calculations showed the time savings, in about 10 months, just on
our first level HelpDesk paid for the cost of the license, and the
students are rating our wireless service provision higher, despite no
further coverage or services having been offered.
One thing I would say is, it doesn't solve the wireless card driver
issues that are prevalent where devices are just running the wrong
drivers, old versions etc. but I think Kevin from Cloupath said, at a
UK University network meeting last month that this is something they
are looking at doing. (but don't quote me on that, before confirming
it with Cloudpath, as I had been drinking a lot the night before!)
Many Thanks
Peter
Peter Methven (Network Specialist)
Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh,
Scotland
www.hw.ac/UICS
This email has been sent from a mobile phone, please excuse any
creative spelling or grammar that may have occured!
On 22 Apr 2010, at 17:42, "Philippe Hanset" <phan...@utk.edu> wrote:
Mike,
Would you use XpressConnect if your campus were EAP-PEAP compliant,
or would you publish instructions and skip the cost of XpressConnect?
In other words, is it so good and makes the life so easy (help desk
calls) that even with a EAP-PEAP
system you would spend the money
Philippe
Univ. of TN
On Apr 22, 2010, at 11:49 AM, Michael Dickson wrote:
We use Cloudpath for our EAP-TTLS 802.1x wireless network. We're very
pleased with how smoothly it works with virtually all Win and Mac OS
variants. It even works with iPhone/iPad and Ubuntu linux.
To handle TTLS in Windows we purchased a licensed copy SecureW2 and
pre-configured the parameters within Cloudpath. When you're ready to
deploy XpressConnect (Cloudpath's product name) you download a web-
ready
tarball to upload to your server. There's even a standalone CD/USB
executable. If you're using SecureW2 (or any other third party helper
app such as XSupplicant) you separately upload that binary in the
/install directory.
XpressConnect auto-detects the OS. If it's a Windows variant it looks
for an existing installation of SecureW2. If it's there it'll
create a
new profile based on your specs. If it's not there XC will install
SecureW2 and configure it appropriately.
In our configuration XpressConnect ignores third party supplicants
even
if they are TTLS capable (e.g. Intel Pro Wireless). We configured
XC to
permanently enable WZC in Windows so that Windows now manages the
wireless card, sort of leaving the third part supplicant and all its
profiles in the lurch. This is of course the only way SecureW2 will
work. I think XC can actually detect and remove third party
supplicants
but we thought that seemed a little mean in an academic environment.
We configured XC to remove our public SSID after a successful
migration
to our 802.1x network. It even pushes the new profile to t he top
of the
list.
As for users who have active profiles on their third party supp we
suggest that they migrate these manually over to Windows. Otherwise
they'll be switching wireless managers back and forth when they leave
the campus. Not the most elegant solution but this is the price
paid for
requiring TTLS on Windows.
Hope this helps.
Mike
********************************************************
Michael Dickson 413.545.9639
Network Analyst Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst
********************************************************
On 4/22/2010 11:13 AM, Reynolds, Walter wrote:
So for those using this how many need to use the TTLS supplicant
setup? For those that do how do you handle if a user is using a
built in supplicant that has profiles for other locations?
-- Walter Reynolds University of Michigan
On Apr 22, 2010, at 6:07 AM, "Gogan, James P"<go...@email.unc.edu>
wrote:
Like others, I'll throw in my $.02 here and indicate that not just
"something similar" but, in fact, XpressConnect from CloudPath has
INDEED been very beneficial here on our campus. With the
diversity of desktop configurations and systems that we have, the
seamless configuration of Windows PCs, Macs, Ubuntu systems,
iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads with a single common-interface tool
(and great support, by the way) for consistent deployment of
802.1X/WPA2-Enterprise cannot be beat.
Great product - classic example of "you get what you pay for".
-- Jim Gogan Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
-----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues
Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:wireless-...@listserv.educause.edu] On Behalf Of Jethro R
Binks Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 5:57 AM To:
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN]
Alternatives to XpressConnect
On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Kevin Ehlers wrote:
We're looking at deploying WPA/WPA2 and we think that something
similar to XpressConnect from CloudPath would be very
beneficial. However, in searching I have been unable to determine
if there are any vendors offering a similar service. Does anyone
know of a competitor to CloudPath in this area?
Our current options are 1) writing our own application + all of
the benefits and drawbacks that go with a homegrown solution,
and 2) a vendor supported tool to configure client's machines.
Any suggestions or alternatives are welcome.
To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv
<WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010
08:49:58 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Automating WPA
Setup
On Tue, 9 Mar 2010, Julian Y. Koh wrote:
At 10:38 AM -0600 3/9/10, Williams, Mr. Michael wrote:
We have tutorials available for our users, but our helpdesk
folks still have to spend a lot of time manually configuring
the wireless supplicant for some of our less tech savvy users.
Does anyone have a solution to this problem?
Here at NU, our Technology Support Services coded up a Windows
utility that we use for this purpose.
<http://www.it.northwestern.edu/oncampus/wireless/wireless-connections/
>
Here's another tool that might be of interest:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/su1x/
Jethro.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . Jethro R Binks Computing Officer, IT Services, University Of
Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
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********** Participation and subscription information for this
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********** Participation and subscription information for this
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**********
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.
**********
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Heriot-Watt University is a Scottish charity
registered under charity number SC000278.
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