Mac OS X and WPA

[#1]

Apple recently released Airport 3.3 for Mac OS 10.3 (Panther). This release provides support for WPA with Macs using either Airport or Airport Extreme wireless NICs.

So far I have been completely unsuccessful associating my PowerBook equipped with an Airport card to an Aironet 1100 running IOS 12.2(13)JA1. The access point is configured with Key Management set to Optional and WPA checked. I also have an ASCII password set because I am just testing with WPA-psk for now. The cipher is set to TKIP + WEP 128 bit with a 128 bit transmit key set in slot 2. I still have clients that can't use WPA and want to continue to support them.

Has anyone had success attaching a Mac with an Airport or Airport Extreme card to a Cisco access point using WPA? If so, any input would be greatly appreciated.

Chris

[dhickey]

I am going to reply to this to bring to the top. I have the same question as you do. Although I haven't tried since the release of 3.3, I couldn't get my Panther Mac authenticated worth a darn.

If anyone has accomplished this, please respond that it is possible....

Thanks

Don Hickey

[cuyahoga]

I just tried get my AirPort Extreme-equipped Mac to authenticate to a Cisco access point with WPA enabled, but to no avail. It keeps jumping back and forth between 'connecting' and 'authenticating.' It must keep getting rejected.

It seems like I'm so close to making it happen but not quite there.

[jkirby]

I've been trying this for weeks to no avail. Panther, Airport 3.3.1. Cisco 1200 AP with lates IOS.

user/pass based WPA authentication works all the way to the RADIUS server (Cisco ACS confirms passed authentication) but the AP refuses to follow through. We've done a lot of testing on this and the problem appears to be Cisco's. Of course, all we can get from Cisco is "It should work".

Cisco, where are you on this?!?

[nikovcco]

With the Airport Software 3.4 it will work. Cofirmed by myself on a Aironet 1200 Access Point with IOS 12.2(15)JA.

[dhickey]

Believe it or not, I just fired up my Emac and was reloading Panther on it to test WPA. I had heard that there was support for the Airport cards....so shortly I will be playing around with this also...

Don

[jkirby]

Do you think it was the Aiport update that did it or the 12.2.(15)JA? Did you need to load a certificate onto the OS X or was username/password enough? What transform type are you loading in OS X (EAP-TLS, TTLS etc)?

I'm upgrading Airport to 3.4 right now and will report back.

[jkirby]

Success! Updated Airport to 3.4, did nothing else but go to my 802.1x config, input the WPA SSID and my username and pasword. Wala, I'm "Connected via LEAP". Nice one that.

Next is to load a cert and try the PEAP and TLS options for a little more security.

[jkirby]

PEAP Works Too! Turned off all the transports except PEAP. Clicked connect, was asked if I wasnted to approve my ROOT CA certs, said yes and now I'm "Connected via PEAP (inner protocol: GTC)". Superb.

Now if there was only a way to make it not save the user password....