Today the first student with an iPhone came to my office. He had been sent to me from the student helpdesk, as they couldn’t help him with getting the iPhone online on our wireless network. The student bought the iPhone for 3000 NOK on eBay, and has not upgraded it. It was hacked to run on one of the Norwegian carriers.

First a few positive words about the iPhone, this was the first time I could sit down and play with the iPhone for more then a few minutes. The graphical user interface is the best on the market today. I’ve played with the calendar, alarm, addressbook, Safari, iPod and settings. There is nothing like iPhone’s graphical user interface, it’s simply both beautiful and responsive.

The negative part is why the student came for help: WIFI. I cannot understand how it can be so poor! Only WEP, WPA and WPA2. What about 802.1X and the WPA Enterprise standards? The lack of it makes me fast conclude that this is not a phone for students, at least not at our university. With the poor WIFI support, students cannot check their student e-mail accounts, browse the university’s webpages for information about the classes they are taking and when their next lecture is gonna be.

So this is what I am about to rewrite and publish in Norwegian on my department’s IT pages:

Currently, the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch do not support WPA with 802.1x, a requirement for “osuwireless” connectivity. Users are prompted only for a password when selecting “WPA” as their encryption type, which indicates that the device is only capable of WPA-PSK, not WPA-Enterprise.

In order for the iPhone or iPod Touch to be compatible with the OSU wireless network, an update would need to be made available from Apple with 802.1x support.

The Office of Information Technology will continue to test iPhone and iPod Touch compatibility as updates are made available.

The quote is the same as published by the Technology Support Center at The Ohio State University.

The iPhone has not been announced in Norway yet, but iPod Touch is just about to hit the street.

My last question is, since my university is part of the Eduroam project, is it so that the iPhone will not work on any of the universities part of this WIFI project? I am not sure, some of these networks might have support for authentification through web browsers. It will be interesting to see how wide spread the iPhone will be among students at universities in U.K, Germany and France this autumn. 802.1X seems to be implemented at many universities also in U.S., so hopefully Apple will come with an update soon.

On the blog Surfing the Luminiferous Ether I found a great entry about the iPhone and it’s lack of 802.1X support.