Please see the Wireless page for help getting access to the Wireless Network.
We use a home-grown application called Maintain to register hosts for use on our network. We also use an appliance called Cisco Clean Access (formerly called Perfigo), which redirects unregistered/unauthenticated users to a welcome page. When a machine has been added to Maintain, our dhcp servers give it a lease and the CCA server allows it to have network access.
We will be evaluating an add-on feature of the CCA system that checks for current patches and up-to-date antivirus signatures. This product is refered to as the Cisco Clean Machine (CCM).
When your unregistered machine comes up on the Wireless Network, it gets an IP address from the autoreg server. The autoreg server then writes the hardware address for your network card and the IP address that were assigned to a MySQL table.
At this point, you are on the network, but can't do much. The Cisco Clean Access machine will not allow you to do anything but web traffic to the OSU home page. If you try to go anywhere else, you are redirected to the Cisco Clean Access welcome page.
On the welcome page, you may choose to register permanently. The link takes you to the Maintain login page. You login with your ONID credentials and are directed to the Wireless Network sign up. Maintain looks up your IP address in the autoreg table and finds your hardware address, and fills it in for you on the screen. (If this doesn't work for any reason, you can enter the hardware address manually.)
After you register your host, several things happen. First, your machine's hardware address is entered into Maintain, along with your ONID username. This allows us to contact you if there is a problem. Within 10 minutes of completing your registration, your machine's hardware address is pushed to the configuation on the campus DHCP servers and the Cisco Clean Access machine. Once this happens, you get a new IP address and you can navigate to any website.
Questions and comments are always welcome to net (@) oregonstate.edu.
