Windows 7 prompting several times

[Morris, Andi]

I'm currently testing this on a wired network, so signal definitely isn't the issue.

I also don't think that this is an issue with freeradius, but I figured this mailing list would be full of people who may have seen this before and have resolved it.

Andi

-----Original Message-----
From: freeradius-users-bounces+amorris=cardiffmet.ac.uk at lists.freeradius.org [mailto:freeradius-users-bounces+amorris=cardiffmet.ac.uk at lists.freeradius.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Newton
Sent: 06 March 2012 14:29
To: FreeRadius users mailing list
Subject: Re: Windows 7 prompting several times

On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 05:36:24PM +0000, Phil Mayers wrote:
> On 05/03/12 16:16, Morris, Andi wrote:
> >Does anyone else get a problem with Windows 7 clients prompting for
> >the radius credentials 2 or 3 times before finally accepting them? No
> >errors are shown on the radius side, and I’ve read that this is a
> >problem with the operating system, but wondered whether anyone in
> >this knowledgeable community had overcome this?
>
> We don't see that, and I've never heard that explanation.

I've seen it here as well. It seems a lot worse (no hard evidence
though) on XP, and also on Vista. Have seen it on 7, but less often. Still haven't managed to work out what's causing it. I think for XP (sp3) it's just ancient wireless support as we see other wireless problems using that. Apart from that it could be either Windows or the Cisco network kit. It could be clients with a weak wireless signal, but I've also seen it sitting close within the range of several APs.

I don't believe there are any problems with FreeRADIUS at all.

Caching passwords gets around the problem generally speaking, but we try not to encourage that for obvious reasons (except that 99% of phones/handhelds do it anyway, so may be less of a reason to worry about it now). It would be nice if Windows cached the credentials long enough to type them in again two seconds later, though, although I'm not sure it's because it thinks the password is wrong, or because something failed. We've not managed to get anything useful out of any windows trace files, that we could see.
Unfortunately it's not easily repeatable.

Matthew


--
Matthew Newton, Ph.D. <mcn4 at le.ac.uk>

Systems Architect (UNIX and Networks), Network Services, I.T. Services, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom

For IT help contact helpdesk extn. 2253, <ithelp at le.ac.uk>
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