Here at my university they use this network authentication system, Cisco Clean Access. It’s meant to be easy for everyone–the administrators and the users. And, if all you ever do is pull up Firefox and browse the web, it’s not that inconvenient.
The trouble is that as nearly as I can discover, there are only two ways to authenticate. The first is to install a Windows client application that automagically authenticates you. This is an unattractive solution for people like me who don’t like lots of random programs running all the time. It’s even less attractive if you’re using a Mac or, in my case, an iPhone.
So what we’re left with is the web interface. You open a browser and no matter where you try to go, you are redirected to the authentication page. No problem if you just opened Firefox and pointed it to Design Observer. But it leads to the silent death of many processes trying to access internet resources without ever opening a browser–like the email app on my iPhone. Or an SSH session in PuTTY.
I wish I could think of a better way, but I see the plight of the administrators. Who’s gonna solve this one for us?
Cisco Clean Access
The device causing my headache
Here at my university they use this network authentication system, Cisco Clean Access. It’s meant to be easy for everyone–the administrators and the users. And, if all you ever do is pull up Firefox and browse the web, it’s not that inconvenient.
The trouble is that as nearly as I can discover, there are only two ways to authenticate. The first is to install a Windows client application that automagically authenticates you. This is an unattractive solution for people like me who don’t like lots of random programs running all the time. It’s even less attractive if you’re using a Mac or, in my case, an iPhone.
So what we’re left with is the web interface. You open a browser and no matter where you try to go, you are redirected to the authentication page. No problem if you just opened Firefox and pointed it to Design Observer. But it leads to the silent death of many processes trying to access internet resources without ever opening a browser–like the email app on my iPhone. Or an SSH session in PuTTY.
I wish I could think of a better way, but I see the plight of the administrators. Who’s gonna solve this one for us?