NAP 802.1X Configuration Walkthrough – Part 3

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This is a continuation from Part 1 and Part 2.

Step 3 – NAP Clients, it’s just too easy

NAP can be configured from the command-line, the MMC (except on XP SP3) and of course Group Policy (GP). Since this is a workgroup scenario, I am going to skip GP – but the principles below are the same.

· Start the services snap-in and locate these two services – “Network Access Protection Agent” (NAPAgent) and “Wired AutoConfig” (dot3svc).

· Start NAPAgent and Dot3svc; set both to “Automatic” startup.

sc config NAPAgent start= auto
net start NAPAgent
sc config Dot3Svc start= auto
net start Dot3Svc

· Start the NAP Client Configuration snap-in; click on the “Enforcement Clients” link.

· Enable the “EAP Quarantine Enforcement Client” by double-clicking on it and selecting “Enable this enforcement client”.

netsh NAP client set enforcement ID = "79623" ADMIN = "ENABLE"

· Click on the “User Interface Settings” link; double-click on the “User Interface Settings” entry to configure text to be displayed to users when NAP is unable to (or in progress of) auto-remediate a problem on the computer.

netsh NAP client set userinterface TITLE = "I regret to inform you that you have been NAP'd!!" TEXT = "Please logoff and go home, do not collect $200"

· You may export / import these settings if you wish.

netsh NAP client export FILENAME = "c:\NapCfg.xml"
netsh NAP client import FILENAME = "c:\NapCfg.xml"

· Start the Network Connections folder; right-click on your network interface and select “Properties”.

· Since you started the “Dot3Svc”, you will now see the “Authentication” tab; Enable 802.1X and caching; Make sure PEAP is selected; Clicks “Settings”.

· In the “Protected EAP Properties” dialog, un-check “Validate server certificate”; Select MS-CHAPv2; Check “Enable Quarantine checks”; Click “Configure”.

· In the “EAP MSCHAPv2 Properties” dialog, un-check the auto-use credentials setting – this is because we are in a workgroup – if you were in a domain you would want to leave this enabled so the domain user would automatically use his domain credentials.

· After you “OK” all of those dialogs, the 802.1X client should now attempt to authenticate to the switch port; if not, simply enable/disable or unplug/plug the NIC; you should get prompted for credentials; type the user / password.

· If everything works you should see something like this; any failures usually show “authentication failed”.

· Thankfully, you can also use the command-line to export/import these settings too.

netsh lan export profile FOLDER = "c:\\"
netsh lan add profile FILENAME = "c:\LANProfile.xml"

Hopefully you now have end-to-end NAP 802.1X working. If not, my next installment includes troubleshooting! :->

Jeff