Wirelessly authenticating with DC

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Can anyone clarify this for me?

When you have a wired network, Windows displays a dialogue box prior to logging in that says "Preparing Network Connections" and shortly after presents you with a login screen. This makes sense, as you need a working network before you can authenticate with a domain controller.

Now with wireless, it would appear that the network isn't established until after the login screen. The link light doesn't appear on my USB D-Link wireless gadget until windows has loaded i.e after I have logged in

I know it is possible to log in using cached credentials if a DC isn't available but then there is usually a noticeable delay. There is no delay though when using wireless.

I am missing something, what is it?

Pete

 

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Hmmm.... I'm going to have to get some wireless experience.

Is your wireless device not loaded until after system start up? The driver for a NIC is loaded during the boot process. However, from what you're describing it sounds as if the drivers for the wireless device aren't being loaded until after login.

When you installed the software for this device did it have one of those little questions as to whether you wanted this available to all users or just yourself?

 

I'm shooting in the dark here, but have you done what's in this link?

 

Thanks Freddy!

I believe it is normal behaviour and not a misconfiguration on my part. I use W2K mainly but I know XP has it's own wireless utility built in that locates and connects to wireless networks. It is just my observation that the connection comes after the login process, which makes me wonder, hmmm how does the login work then You link is mainly related to encryption techniques WPA rather than WEP but this behaviour is the same even with no encryption.

Pete

 

Bluerinse,

Go to the KB and do a search in Windows 2000 for the following just as I type them.

wireless "active directory"

I think you might be rather interested in seeing what MS has to say. It was a real surprise to me.

 

Thanks again Freddy, that is what I was looking for.

Hmmm it seems there is more to it than I thought too. Strange that nobody seems to have mentioned it on any forum that I have visited over the years

I will investigate further and post my findings!

Pete

 

You're welcome. Glad I could help. I learned a lot from that too.

 

For anyone interested Here is one of the links I found!

Ye gods!

Pete

 

I know what you mean. When I began reading and they started in with radius, dial-up access, certificate services, etc... my eyes just rolled back in my head. This is a major pain.

 

The weird thing is I haven't done any of that, I just installed the wireless adapter which authenticates with my ADSL wireless modem/router after Windows loads. The router also has four wired ports, one of which my SBS Server 2003 box is plugged into. I can do everything I could when it was wired. The lappy was joined to the domain when it was wired, now it is wireless maybe I am using cached credentials???

None of the articles I have read so far make it very clear.

I should test out a new group policy to see if the lappy is getting configured via active directory still.

Pete

 

How long have you been using wireless? I can't recall off the top of my head how long the login credentials are cached when a global catalog server isn't available. If I'm correct it can last for a few days anyway, but I could be all wet on that time span. I just don't remember.

 

I have been wireless for about 6 weeks now!

The plot thickens

Pete

 

I could be wrong, so if someone knows for sure, please let us know, But...

You are using a cached account, but, that account is re-established and synced once your wireless connection is established to the network.

I have customers that have had wireless laptops for months.
Granted we did not go thru these steps to SECURE via these pages. we just use 128bit WEP. Granted, my clients are much smaller companies ;) and the cost to do this would be higher then they are able to afford.

BTW, I found another link you may want to read over ;)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/wlandply.mspx

HTH

 

you are all looking at microsoft for answers, while imho you should be looking at the wireless card manufacturer. this is a common problem, not only with d-link. intel pro sets (like the 2200bg) and some cisco adapters are also notorious for this. only with the right driver, the right client software and the right configuration settings will you be able to solve this.

the reason differs. some wireless adapters are working with a user-based configuration (doh!), so they require a user profile to be loaded first, before they know what to do. meaning you first have to logon with the cached account, before the adapter kicks in and requests an ip address from the dhcp server. of course by that time, it's already too late.
other wireless adapters require a certain option to be enabled, which is only available when using the proprietary software instead of the default windows wireless connection tool.

 

Hmmm.... So my original premise may have been correct. Amazing, considering I know so little about wireless.

 

yes, master, you were correct.

 

Now, now. No need to go and get sarcastic.

 

Thanks for the input everyone, it is all very interesting. Any idea what the option name is? I have looked at my D-Link DWL G122 USB adapters utility program but the only options under advanced or anywhere else do not seem to cover this? Just the usual channel, encryption settings, adhoc/infrastructure etc.

Pete

 

no, because it differs per manifacturer.
i think in the intel proset utility it's called single sign-on, or pre-logon connect, or something like that. in the cisco aironet utility for cisco wifi cards i know one can define logon options when working with leap connections, but i don't remember how the option was named specifically.
in any case, it's different each time, and i don't know d-link adapters. actually, i don't know if d-link even has a solution for it. for instance, at the time i faced this problem at work both with the intel proset utility as well as the cisco acu only the newer software versions were able to handle this issue.

 

Thanks D-Faktor I really appreciate that!

Interestingly, I have noticed that if I just log out and not shut down, the link light stays connected even if I log in as another user. When I log back in, I can see the start up script from SBS running minimised for a few seconds which happens before the wireless utility would have normally negotiated the connection. This is how the cached credentials get renewed. I think!

Pete