WPA2/Enterprise wireless connection

Question

Level 3

715 points

WPA2/Enterprise wireless connection

I am at college and the campus-wide wireless network is a WPA2/Enterprise network. It requires login credentials that are the same as the student logins to the school email and other things. My problem is that often times when I open my laptop and connect to this network it prompts me for a login. I have already put in the username and password and it has been stored in the WPA profile for this network. I have checked the profile and the option for always prompting for the password is not enabled. I am a bit hesitant to bring this to the school's help desk because last time i had a problem with connecting on the network they wanted me to reconfigure my whole computer. I have tried deleting the WPA profiles and making a new one and that did not seem to change anything. Is there anything I can do to make the login prompt go away and not bother me anymore?

MBP 2.53Ghz Unibody 4GB RAM, iPod Touch 16GB 1G, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Mac Developer

Posted on Feb 17, 2010 6:08 AM

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Answer 1

spiz

Level 1

4 points

Apr 26, 2010 6:59 AM in response to a Mac user

I'm an IT administrator for a university and have been having this problem for several weeks as well on snow leopard machines. 10.6.3 does not fix it... It's a big problem when the whole appeal of using a wpa2 network to avoid logins every time, actually breaks and leaves the user disconnected. It's just not saving their password for the network and continually reverts to automatic.

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Answer 2

johnbkim

Level 1

10 points

Sep 26, 2010 8:29 AM in response to johnbkim

I stumbled upon this thread while trying to fix a problem where my MBP drops the wifi signal since upgrading to Snow Leopard (discussed in this apple discussions thread). I've run out of options, so even though the solutions offered in this thread doesn't seem relevant, I tried creating an 802.1x profile and, so far, it appears to alleviate my signal-dropping problem. Could be a coincidence, I suppose. Weird.

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Answer 3

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

Apr 12, 2010 8:13 AM in response to John Huculak

I am going to give this a bump because it is still happening in 10.6.3

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Answer 4

Feb 25, 2010 12:38 PM in response to a Mac user

I have the EXACT same problem. I've followed all of the directions to connect to 802.1X WPA Enterprise locked network. I had no problems under Leopard, but with Snow Leopard, I'm locked out. Has anyone found a fix yet?

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Answer 5

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

Apr 26, 2010 7:34 AM in response to spiz

something I have noticed is that the WPA2/Enterprise network at my university seems to use a certificate that is not being registered as signed by a certificate authority. I had to press "trust" on it when I originally joined the network. Something else I have noticed is that Leopard noes not seem to have this issue, nor does my iPod touch. All other students here with macbook pros from the school are running 10.5, and they have no idea what I am talking about when I say I have to put a password in to connect to the network.

The prompt to rejoin the network happens most times when I reboot. only sometimes does it happen when I close my laptop and then open it again.

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Answer 6

makesh

Level 1

4 points

Apr 28, 2010 11:51 PM in response to a Mac user

I have the same problem too. At home it connects perfectly, but at work, it keeps prompting for userid/passwd. I have tried deleting the entries from Network Preferences & Keychain. But every day I'm having to delete and recreate the entries.

If I don't delete, then I find multiple entries of the same network under the Airport section in Network Preferences->Advanced.

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Answer 7

spiz

Level 1

4 points

Apr 30, 2010 9:39 AM in response to a Mac user

Some have vmware, some don't. Some are different generations of macbooks/macairs. It doesn't make a difference which. Our security certificate is signed as well, so I don't think that is related.

It just seems to be a snow leopard bug...

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Answer 8

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

May 7, 2010 7:00 AM in response to satcomer

I would give it a go, but I am already home for the summer. My only concern is that the blog post is from 2006, and this only seems to be a problem in snow leopard. Previous versions of OS X don't have this same issue.

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Answer 9

jbsnyder

Level 1

5 points

Jul 21, 2010 4:25 PM in response to a Mac user

I still seem to be having this issue. I was about to start going through and trashing settings files to see if that helped.

The strange thing about all of this is that it doesn't seem to store the passwords in keychain when they're entered, though if I delete that and try setting things up again in the network under the Network preference pane from scratch it doesn't make a new entry for passwords entered after that point. I feel like this might be either that the preference pane doesn't have permission to save out settings appropriately and that it's silently failing.

This is quite irritating. So far I've mostly just ignored the issue and re-entered my password each time, but I just ran across another user complaining of the same, also, I believe, on 10.6.4.

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Answer 10

gradguy

Level 1

28 points

Jul 22, 2010 11:05 AM in response to a Mac user

I just posted in the dropping wi-fi signal thread, but I figured that this also applies to me. I'm running 10.6.4 and still have this issue. Although I have always had to sign in in SN, as you all are complaining about here, and still have to in 10.6.4, it's only since this latest update that my computer is dropping the connection.

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Answer 11

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

Jul 29, 2010 12:45 PM in response to gradguy

Well in an interesting development I got an email from my school saying that anyone that has a Macbook Pro can get an update to snow leopard, as well as all the new freshman that would get a macbook pro are now going to have snow leopard instead of leopard. I will report back once I figure out how they handle it.

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Answer 12

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

Aug 16, 2010 6:34 AM in response to a Mac user

Bump for update, school says that they have run into minimal issues. They suggest manually adding a 802.1x profile under the advanced settings in the network system preferences. I believe I did this last time when I was having issues, but I will try again in a few weeks when I get back to school.

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Answer 13

Aug 26, 2010 8:54 AM in response to a Mac user

Bump. Last year, I rarely had this issue w/ my school's WPA2 enterprise network (it was in it's test phase last year). This year, I have to login EVERY time. I'm not sure what the issue is. I'm using a current generation Macbook Pro, updated to 10.6.4. I haven't had the issue on my iPhone or iPad when connecting to the WPA network, just my mac.

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Answer 14

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

Aug 31, 2010 6:29 PM in response to jmaliakal

I go back to school in a week, I will be able to report back with more solid results on performance then. So far no more suggestions from my school's tech dept. I plan on using my iPad for most of my classes so I should not be faced with this issues as often as I was previously.

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Answer 15

a Mac user Author

Level 3

715 points

Sep 24, 2010 4:21 PM in response to a Mac user

Update to say that I have been at school for 3 weeks now and I have not really noticed happening as often. It has not been happening to a few other laptops that I have upgraded to Snow Leopard from a Leopard image created by the school. I recreated the 802.1X profile again and I think that seems to have fixed it. Anyone else seeing success?

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