WPAD file

[pettit87]

Looking for some help...

 

We have a smoothwall UTM 1000 box and we are currently using the .pac file auto created by this.

 

I am looking to use a WPAD file so that I can deploy the proxy settings via DNS and DHCP to BYOD clients as this is causing a headache at the moment to do.

 

How do you create a .wpad file? Is it as simple as renaming the .pac file to a .wpad? If not how can I create a .wpad that reflects the .pac information.

 

I have a webserver that I can host the .wpad file on.

[free780]

I'm currently looking at this but you have to expose a webserver. You also have the issue of android not supporting proxy auth for all apps.

[pettit87]

I have a web server that can host the wpad file.

 

Even with BYOD we only have a very very small percentage of android users...so this wouldn't cause me too much of a headache

[IrritableTech]

Yes, a WPAD file is a pac file. Rename the extension and it's good to go.

 

You may have to adjust the MIME types your webserver will serve though.

 

Unfortunately as I said in another thread yesterday, WPAD isn't a silver bullet ( http://www.edugeek.net/forums/wireless-networks/127865-byod-ruckus-wireless.html ). We found it only worked on windows machines and those windows machines that had IE setting 'Automatically detect settings' set. It is on usually by default - but sometimes people have turned it off for one reason or another.

[CyberNerd]

We use a symbolic link between the pac file and the wpad.dat file - so they are the same file.

You also need to register wpad in your DNS because browsers look for http://wpad/wpad.dat

[sparkeh]

Not sure how much of this already know but here goes:

 

• Create a website to serve the proxy file.
  
• Configure the web server to serve the WPAD file with a MIME type of "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig".
  
• Create a file called wpad.dat, contents will be the same as your .pac file.
  
• Put that file at the root of the wpad website you created.
  
• Configure option 252 on the dhcp server with the string http:///wpad.dat.
  
• Create a dns entry so that 'wpad' resolves to the FQDN of the wpad website.
  
• Set clients' proxy settings to 'Automatically detect settings'
  

 

Think that's about it.

[pleach85]

You might also need to update the dns global block list depending on the server(s) running your dns

 

Removing WPAD from DNS block list