Posts tagged Wireless

Introduction to Windows 7

2
3 years ago
by frankps in ,

It’s two months since I got the first introduction to Windows 7 (code named Vienna) at Microsoft Tech-Ed 2008 in Barcelona, and this week Microsoft released a public beta of their next client operating system. I have installed it on my MacBook Pro, and plan to install it on an office machine in AD and on my home machine.

I have been using Windows Vista for about 3 years now, through some of the betas and later with the released product. At the department where I am the sysadmin, more of then half of our computers are running Windows Vista (three of them x64) and Office 2007. All in all, I can say that we are very satisfied. This is not the situation many other places, as I often hear of companies that have decided to continue with Windows XP and not implement Vista in their organization. At our department we have only ran in to a few problems, most of them have been software not following Microsoft’s coding guidelines.

Watch the video on NRKbeta video – Direct link to this video

(more…)

Another reason to say NO!

0
4 years ago
by frankps in , ,

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.

From AirPort Express to Apple TV

3
4 years ago
by frankps in , , , , ,

I have just bought Apple TV 40 GB (previously known as the “iTV”) as a replacement for Apple Express, and spent most of the weekend to rip my CD collection (320 Kbps) and synced it over to the Apple TV, and then packed down all the CDs in plastic boxes and put the CD player in the bottom of a locker. They are not to go back up on the shelf!

(more…)

Eduroam

0
5 years ago
by frankps in , , ,

Just the other day I discovered that my university, University of Oslo, had joined Eduroam. Eduroam stands for Education Roaming, and is a RADIUS-based infrastructure that uses 802.1X security technology to allow for inter-institutional roaming.

Universities around the world have set WIFI equipment for students/scientific staff can access the Internet from pretty much anywhere on the campus. The networks are most oftenly not open, and that is the case at our university also. To access our wireless campus network you need to authenticate with a username and password, something that often have been bad news for visiting professor, as it meant that they had to find someone with network permissions access, register as a user, and get a guest password before beginning work. Well, that could take most of their first day at the campus. This led to the start of an European consortium of network gurus developing a roaming solution allowing users of participating institutions to access the Internet at other campuses by using their credentials from their home institutions. A visiting researcher tells the local network where to go to confirm his or her credentials. Once confirmed, the network issues limited access based on pre-set controls.

A wide range of European nations have already joined the initiative, including the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Slovenia, Denmark, Poland, Latvia, Finland, Norway, Luxembourg and Italy. Taiwan and Australia are examples of countries from outside of Europe that have also joined Eduroam.

The solution works with MacOS X, Windows and Linux (but configuring it for Linux seems close to a nightmare…).

Go to Top