Authenticating Laptop without a Certificate Installed

[Phil Mayers]

On 01/24/2012 08:53 PM, McSparin, Joe wrote:
> When I connect a mobile phone or a tablet to my wireless network it
> works fine even though they don't have a certificate installed. I am
> checking the MAC address and putting them into a public vlan if it is
> not found. However when I connect a windows laptop that does not have a
> certificate installed it doesn't allow it. It won't connect and radius
> says it has an unknown CA I am using PEAP which it is my understanding
> would allow you to connect with a user name and password and no
> certificate if you told it not to validate the certificate. It is
> important that people be able to connect even if they don't have a
> certificate and I just control it based on the mac address.

Frankly this email confused me.

WHICH certificate are you talking about?

There is:

  1. A server cert
  2. The CA cert that signs the server cert
  3. Optionally (not usually) a client cert

PEAP normally REQUIRES that #2 be installed on the clients.