One major consideration is that the use of https for more and more webpages is resulting in more confused users not getting redirected to captive portal login pages. There is also the more obvious issue that client data is not encrypted over the air, although you could argue that more and more applications are using TLS/SSL. I do think that you are correct that captive portal robustness has been dramatically increased with products like the 5508, which handles a great deal more simultaneous connections than other products before it. I also feel like captive portal security is kinder to backend authentication servers since the authentication is typically done once with a decent length session timeout, whereas many supplicants do tons of reauths.
Thanks. Ken -- Ken LeCompte - Manager of Information Technology Central Systems and Services Office of Information Technology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Office ~ (848) 445-4823 Facebook: http://fb.me/RUWireless On Nov 19, 2013, at 3:28 PM, "Ashfield, Matt (NBCC)" <matt.ashfi...@nbcc.ca> wrote: > Just wondering what people’s thoughts are here regarding using the Web Portal > authentication vs 802.1x auth in your wifi networks. Obviously one big “pro” > for 802.1x is dynamic vlan assignment based on the users’s credentials, but > certainly for web-portal the big “pro” is simplicity for the user. > > We currently use ExpressConnect to configure student devices for our 802.1x > wifi network using certbased authentication, and while it works great 90% of > the time, we have 10% where it’s tough to get the user on for a variety of > reasons on student owned devices. Since we provide guest access via a portal > authentication, we inevitably get the question as to why don’t we do all wifi > auth with that? > > I know when I first started out, there were limitations with the # of users a > portal auth system could support, but I don’t think that’s a major concern > anymore (we are using Cisco 5508 controllers here). Just wondering what the > thoughts are on this list. Always good input. > > Thanks > > > > Matt > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE > Constituent Group discussion list can be found at > http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
