Need help and advice on wireless guest access proxy settings

[sammy42]

Need some help fast have just had new netgear wc7590 wireless installed for a new students domain laptop scheme. all set up and working great thats not the problem .

 

The problem is the SLT have decided to change the goal post by promising the students that they can now connect to the wireless with there own laptops this is great as we are using the Local County Council proxy settings which is were the problems lies we can get out to the internet if the students manualy put the settings in themselves. SLT now want the students to be able to connect without putting in the proxy settings manualy. which is where the problem lies they have given me a very short time line of only 10 days to have this done and tested and them presented to the students that it works.

 

As you all can appreciate time is tight what i am reaily asking for is for some one out there who is using a solution that allows the proxy settings to be forced on to the laptop that does this and is working and has been tested by students

 

please i have read all the post about the pros and cons of letting students use the wireless with there own devices so please no posts about this.

[DAZZD88]

There are a couple of posts on here about PAC files. You may want to look at deploying a PAC file via DHCP. That way when your students connect to your domain and they get an IP from your DHCP, they also get the proxy settings.

[IrritableTech]

Yep, as stated you'll need a proxy pac file or a wpad file. I used this website when setting up mine...

FindProxyForURL.com - PAC & WPAD Resource

 

It's fairly straight forward on a laptop, most browsers will work with wpad. Smart phones are the trickier area!

 

My current wpad/pac file looks like this...

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
if ((host=="localhost") ||
shExpMatch(host, "*localhost.*") ||
shExpMatch(host, "*10.0.0.1/20*") ||
shExpMatch(host, "*bypass.this.url*") ||
isPlainHostName(host) ||
(host == "127.0.0.1"))
{
return "DIRECT";
}
return "PROXY A.B.C.D:P"
}

Edited October 4, 2011 by terrorvis

[sammy42]

Terrorvis

 

Thanks for the reply yeatarday We kept our nice and simple and it worked but now i have a problem where we cant delete the proxy setting off the laptop the. W7 home laptops seem to keep the settings some where deap in side the laptop we have read loads on how to remove the settings to no avil . when you tick auto detect they are there even when we have removed the DHCP reservation for the Wpad.dot file. Have you ever came accross this before on your set up. or do you know of some one who has.

[Max_Power]

We have student wireless access for their own devices and its something that needs to be planned carefully. They will try and get on anything and everything.

We have a managed wireless and ended up only allowing access to the web - they are not connected to the domain, they just get an IP address, we enter MAC into wireless and then add their username to a group in AD and they can authenticate onto the web through a browser. They do have to enter a proxy setting though.

 

Went down the road of automatically setting the proxy when they connect but it caused problems when they went home etc, and that was more hasstle than it was worth - with every student laptop being different we had a wide range of issues and suddenly you get the whos responsability is it! with over 1500 kids onsite i cannot support 1500 different devices, so showing kids how to change the proxy, and issuing sheets and doing lunch time training session with them, solved the problem.

Also used a piece of software called proxy switcher - which will detect if you are at home or school and change the proxy for you, but then you are into the world of - should we be telling students to install stuff on their laptop to get it to work etc.

 

Every school is different in their approach some dont even allow students to connect their devices. You should ensure though, that you have SMT backing that what ever route you choose and that you / they understand you are not responsible for every students laptop config, and chances are some will not work.