ad hoc | PeteNetLive

Problem

Ever sat in a train station, cafe, or airport, and seen “Free Public Wifi”? It’s a well known fact that my personal motto is “there’s nothing better than free things”, sadly in this case your not going to get what you were expecting 🙁

Solution

There’s nothing particularly sinister about it, it’s caused by a bug that was in Windows XP. This particular bug was fixed with service pack 3, but not everyone has installed service pack 3.

The more technically astute of you will see on some of the screen shots above, that this network is NOT an access point it’s an “Ad Hoc” network, this basically means you’re going to connect to to another computer. The whole thing started because when Windows XP could not connect to its favourite/stored wireless sites/connections, it sets up an “Ad Hoc” network with the name of the last network it connected to. The “Free Public Wifi” network spread like wildfire as machines were all connecting to each other on wireless connections that were not what they was purporting to be. It seems that (like me) everybody likes free stuff.

The same problem can occur with machines advertising popular access point names like linksys, netgear, default, tmobile, hpsetup etc as well.

Learn the difference between “Infrastructure Networks” and “Ad Hoc Networks”

KB ID 0000923

Problem

If you have a corporate wireless network, you can send the settings out to your clients, rather than have them all ask you what the wireless settings are, and how do they connect.

Here I’m going to use Domain group policies, but the procedure is the same for local policies (just run gpedit.msc instead). And the dialog boxes are exactly the same as if you were configuring them on the client machine. (You can import the settings form a working client if you like).

Solution

1. On a Domain Controller > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management Console > Navigate to an OU that contains your computer objects and either create a new GPO, or edit an existing one.

2. Navigate to;

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Computer Configuration >
Policies > Window Settings > Security Settings > Wireless Network (IEEE 802.11) Policies > Create A New Wireless Network Policy for Windows Vista and Later Releases

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3. Give the policy a name and add in an ‘Infrastructure’ type network profile.

4. Name the profile > Add in the SSID of the wireless network > Security Tab.

5. Set your authentication type, here I’m using WPA2/AES.

Optional

6. Here I want my client computers to see the wireless network, before the users log on (so that their logon scripts will run and their drives get mapped) Advanced > Enable Single Sign On > OK.

7. Properties > Remove the tick from ‘Validate server certificate’ > OK.

Note: I’m configuring for use with an HP MSM controller, if I leave this option ticked, I will have to upload the CA Cert from my domain, into the controller, or clients cannot join the wireless network.

8. I’m not making any changes to the Network Permissions tab > Apply > OK.

9. Now either wait a couple of hours, run gpupdate /force on a client, (or reboot it).

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Beware “Free Public WiFi”

Problem

Solution

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