4 SSIDs 1 Secondary Academy – Domain WiFi Setup

Now that we have the basics configured its time to setup the first SSID (shown here as OSA-WiFi). This SSID will be used for Windows computers that are domain joined, this could be desktop PCs with wireless adapters as well as laptops and tablet PCs with built in wireless.

To complete this section you will need a Windows Server with the Network Access Protection role installed on it as well as a valid SSL assigned to it (the SSL cert must be ‘in date’ as otherwise your clients won’t connect to the network). If you don’t have a valid SSL certificate issued by a 3rd party you can use this guide here which shows you how to use the Active Directory certificate services to provision your own – http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-server-2008/Setting-up-Wi-Fi-Authentication-Windows-Server-2008-Part1.html.

One of the great things about using this kind of authentication in a domain environment is that you don’t need to manage individual passkeys for your clients (in a school it can be a massive time saver if you have a class set of 30 new laptops to roll out) as all the settings required to connect can be pushed down via Group Policy Object.

Network Access Protection Server

First to be setup is the Windows Network Access Protection Server; this server hosts a service called RADIUS which receives authentication requests from the HP MSM and then checks the credentials (in this case the fact that the computer wishing to connect is indeed a member of the Windows Active Directory Domain) against Active Directory and in turn allows/prevents the client from connecting to the network.

HP MSM

Now that we have the backend service together its time to get the HP MSM Controller to use the RADIUS/NAP server and present a SSID to the clients.

Group Policy Setup

As previously mentioned by using this Wireless authentication model you can easily pass out the settings to your domain joined Windows Computers without having to manually tap in a passkey on each machine. Ok so maybe it take a while to setup and maintain but in the long run shouldn’t we be nice to our technicians and get them doing something more important?

In the next part of this guide I’ll look at the setup of the Apple Mac wireless network as well as give you some pointers on how to get Bonjour packets to traverse between your Windows Wireless and Apple Network (great for the modern craze of Airplay).