3Com OfficeConnect WX1200 Release Note

Also see for OfficeConnect WX1200: User guide Command reference Configuration guide Hardware installation guide Reference manual

Contents

Points to Note when using the WX1200 and WX4400 5■ Microsoft has extensive documentation on how toconfigure and use wireless 802.1X authenticationin an Active Directory environment, published ontheir website. You can start with Microsoft’s Wi-Ficenter at:www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/networking/wifi/default.mspx■ Installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 is recom-mended for all wireless clients as it includes severalimportant hotfixes.■ If you are not prepared to install Service Pack 2,3Com strongly recommends that all wireless clientsuse Service Pack 1a with the following hotfixesinstalled:■ KB826942—This is the WPA Hotfix Rollup and isavailable through Microsoft Update■ KB834669—This corrects an 802.1x client issuewhich can cause system instability problems inWindows XP. You will need to contact Microsoftdirectly for this hotfix.■ If your network uses logon scripts, Active Directorygroup policies, or your users regularly share theirlaptops, you should enable computer authentica-tion (also known as machine authentication) toachieve full functionality over your wireless con-nection.■ Download current drivers for your NICs from theNIC vendor(s).■ If your wireless NIC’s driver includes the AEGIS pro-tocol manager for WPA support, 3Com recom-mends against installing it. Some drivers install thisautomatically if you run the setup.exe utility toinstall the driver. 3Com strongly recommends thatyou update the driver manually using the driverproperties in the Network control panel instead ofinstalling the client manager.■ If you use computer authentication with differentVLANs for the Computer and User accounts anddo not have the WPA hotfix rollup (KB826942) orService Pack 2, you need to install Microsoft hotfixKB822596. Otherwise, DHCP will not operate cor-rectly after the user authenticates. You must con-tact Microsoft technical support for this hotfix. It isnot available from their website. For more informa-tion on computer authentication, see “ComputerAuthentication”.■ If MD5 challenge is configured on a Windows XPclient for wired authentication, the quiet periodmust be set to 0 to guarantee successful authenti-cation. In addition, if the authentication is carriedout manually, the timeout value must be set to noless than 30 seconds in order to allow the userample time to enter their username and password.For example, to configure 802.1X on a WX switchto allow these users time to log in, type the follow-ing commands:WX1200# set dot1x quiet-period 0WX1200# set dot1x tx-period 30Windows 2000 Many enterprises have a largeinstalled base of Windows 2000 laptops, making thisa common choice of platform. Windows 2000 ServicePack 4 includes a native 802.1X client. If you chooseto use the 802.1X client built-in to Windows 2000,please note the following: