WPAD & BYOD

[gtcodave]

Hi,

 

We're strongly considering using WPAD (as it's pretty cool) in our college to facilitate the application of proxy settings automatically to computers, laptops and peoples' own devices.

 

One concern which was raised, which I'm having a little difficulty clarifying through Google is whether any settings applied by a WPAD are permanent or temporary.

 

Ideally if a student's laptop joined our guest network, proxy settings were applied (automatically so we won't need to show them how) and then they went home and joined their own network, that those settings would then not be applied and interfering with thier connectivity.

 

Has anyone here any experience with this?

 

Thanks !

[eean]

You're fine. It's temporary.

[Speedydowt]

That is a very good point indeed. I'd really like to know this as well! My thoughts are that it would be temporary as don't you need option 252 set in DHCP for the PAC file to be set? Therefore when students go home they get DHCP through there router and are no longer prompted to look for the wpad.pac file.

 

Having said that- this would work because when kids go home they don't want a proxy set anyway!

[APMerry]

If the laptop is set to automatically detect it will work fine when they go home. We use a WPAD file, although using a transparent proxy is even better for students as they don't need to authenticate.

[Alis_Klar]

If we use WPAD via DNS is this a zero touch method cross platform? Do we still have to use group policy to make sure "use auto config" is checked? In iOS do we have to select "auto"? Are there any browsers which still fail closed? (i.e. proxy is set on when a PAC file cannot be found). Is there a table of how various browsers interpret the PAC file? A good source of documentation would help greatly. Know about FindProxyForURL - PAC & WPAD Resource Edited October 31, 2014 by Alis_Klar