Wireless Bandwidth issues

[bsarteepsd]

We have a 1142/1252 AP network with a 4400 controller and WCS v6.0.182.0...

We have issues with wireless clients being unable to consistently run login scripts in Active Directory. Often, a user will log in and not have any drives mapped when wireless, but it works 100% of the time when plugged in.

I'm looking for suggestions as to the best way to troubleshoot this issue...

Thanks!

[weterry]

What kind of authentication are you doing? Wireless Supplicant?

It sounds like you are trying to get a Wireless Machine to be on the network before a user logs in (that way the AD scripts run when the user is authenticated to AD).

If these scripts aren't running, then it sounds to me like your not actually on the wireless network at login, and therefor are logging in with cached credentials. Do you agree?

If doing some kind of user based 802.1X authentication, you may want to look into "machine authentication".

If doing a PSK (or 802.1x for the matter), confirm if your supplicant is capable of loading before a user logs in.

[bsarteepsd]

Agreed -- the machines do not seem to be connecting to the wireless fast enough. So I have to ask myself... why? I get the feeling of "other people are doing this, what am I doing differently?"

To answer your questions:

We are using WPA(TKIP) and WPA2(AES). Some of the hardware we have out there cannot do WPA2(AES), about 20%.

We have a mixed group of Windows XP SP2/SP3 and OS X (10.4/10.5) in the field using the built-in supplicants. Regarding the Windows hardware, it is a mix of Gateway and Dell with mostly a variety of Intel wireless hardware (2100, 2200) but there are some Lite-On wireless adapters in the mix.

We do not run any hardware (802.1x) authentication at this time, our wired hardware does not adequately support it (Extreme). We are just beginning a slow rollout of updated, better hardware.