Has anyone on the list deployed 802.1x on their wired LAN of Mac OS X
workstations? There are plenty of sites on the web explaining how one
would connect their own laptop to an 802.1x-secured Airport network,
but I'm talking about using it to secure all of our permanent
workstations (the vast majority of which are Panther machines, to be
Tiger by mid-2006) whose network outlets are in a public place.
I notice that the Internet Connect application seems to handle the
establishment of 802.1x sessions. Our current edge switches don't
support 802.1x, so I'm not in a position to play around at the
moment, but I'm assuming there is some way to have the client
machines automatically establish their 802.1x session early during
system startup (by using some sort of public key or whatever), as
this is a managed environment so network access is required for
logins to succeed.
I understand generally how 802.1x works, but am only familiar with
configurations in which the end-user is giving a username and
password that is then authenticated by the switch using a RADIUS
server, or some similar configuration. Having the user provide the
credentials in this way is obviously unworkable when the machine is a
workstation that is always connected to the wired LAN and is used by
many different users.
All will probably become clear when we actually receive our new
switches and I can set them up on the workbench and test the crap out
of them, but, naturally, I thought I'd ask for first-hand experiences
first. Off-list, if you must, since I've just realised this isn't
overly related to Mac OS X Server ;-)
Cheers
James
--
James Tolchard
System Administrator
Christ's College Canterbury
Phone: +64 3 364 6806
