We just went option 1, did a self-signed 20 year CA, then generated radius 
certs off that.   Only role/function of that CA is for RADIUS.  (PEAP-MSCHAPv2).
For the most part, things went well, we use SecureW2 for onboarding if clients 
choose to do so, which installs the CA and sets the verification check, with a 
wildcard against the domain so any number of radius server changes could be in 
play.. (*.network.<your domain>).

Only issues so far with this:

1 - Windows 7 will not trust the cert unless you onboard / install the CA, just 
joining the network doesn't work.
2 - We've had about a dozen Windows 10 clients fail to connect out of 1,000's.  
Appears to be a software/patching issue, chasing with Microsoft now.   If we 
boot the problem machine from a clean windows 10 boot disk, works fine.

I doubt we will get 20 years out of it.  Sometime before hand we will probably 
need to update due to encryption levels, exploits, new methods, etc.  But at 
least we won't be changing simply because the timer ran out. :)

I look forward to option 4 in the near future, although it doesn't fully solve 
the issue, but since folks need to onboard, makes things easier to manage.

Carl Oakes
California State University Sacramento



From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chuck Enfield
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 2:24 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Radius certificate length vs. onboarding opinions

Thanks Philippe.  Hadn’t thought about fragmentation coming from the internet.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Philippe Hanset
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 5:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Radius certificate length vs. onboarding opinions

All,

We love option 4 but it has its issues...and on that note let me share (with 
his permission) a tidbit from Curtis Larsen from University of Utah
sent to the eduroam-admins list about EAP-TLS and firewalls/load balancer.
Make a mental note for the future ;-), it took us a while to discover that 
problem: Fragmentation, fragmentation, fragmentation.

Best,

Philippe

Philippe Hanset
www.anyroam.net<http://www.anyroam.net>

------------------
From Curtis:

We resolved this today working with our Firewall team but I wanted to thank 
Chad with Anyroam support for helping with the pcaps and suggesting a look at 
fragmentation initially.

It turns out our problem had to do with how fragmented packets are handled by 
our border firewalls and our chosen load-balancing method on the respective 
port-channel interfaces.  The key is that we needed to balance these RADIUS 
sessions/transactions on source/dest. IP alone instead of including the TCP/UDP 
port as well.  The problem did not occur with PEAP MSCHAPv2 tests because the 
packets never fragmented and thus all had the same UDP port number and all got 
marked as the same session/transaction and sent out the same interface.  
Sometimes we got lucky and all EAP-TLS packets needed for a single 
authentication went the same way and it worked but often packets went different 
ways and the fragments were not able to be marked as part of the same 
session/transaction and that is when my server got half of the packets.

Curtis K. Larsen
Senior Wi-Fi Network Engineer
University of Utah IT/CIS
Office 801-587-1313
------------------

On Oct 30, 2017, at 4:19 PM, Mike Atkins 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

We are option 3 with 3 year certs.  We were in the same boat as Craig just over 
a year ago.  We moved to a different onboarding utility and different CA.  It 
is a long story so feel free to hit me up offline.  That said, in the future we 
will likely end up using both options 3 & 4 to be flexible with 
device/owner/use.



Mike Atkins
Network Engineer
Office of Information Technology
University of Notre Dame
Phone: 574-631-7210


     ----  .__o
   ----- _-\_<,
   ---  (*)/'(*)

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
 On Behalf Of Craig Simons
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 2:22 PM
To: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Radius certificate length vs. onboarding opinions

All,

I know the subject has been broached on the list a few times before, but I’m 
looking for informal opinions/survey about how you are deploying your Radius 
EAP certificates for PEAP/TTLS users (non-TLS). We use Cloudpath to onboard 
users, but recently went through a difficult renewal period to replace our 
expiring certificate. As we had configured all of our clients to “verify the 
server certificate” (as you should from a security perspective), we found that 
iOS/MacOS and Android clients did not take kindly to a new certificate being 
presented. This resulted in quite a few disgruntled users who couldn’t connect 
to WiFi as well as a shell-shocked Service Desk. To help prevent this in the 
future (and because we are moving to a new Radius infrastructure), what is the 
consensus on the following strategies:

Option 1: Using a self-signed/private PKI and a 10 year cert. Onboard with 
"verify server certificate" enabled

Option 2: Removing all traces of “verify server certificate” from OnBoard 
configuration and use 2-year certs from CAs

Option 3: Use 2-year CA certificates, enable “verify server certificates” and 
educate/prepare every two years for connection issues.

Option 4 (probably the best long-term answer): Move to private PKI and EAP-TLS.

Opinions?

Craig Simons
Network Operations Manager

Simon Fraser University | Strand Hall
8888 University Dr., Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
T: 778.782.8036 | M: 604.649.7977 | 
www.sfu.ca/itservices<http://www.sfu.ca/itservices>

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