Remote Config of Wireless Settings

We have just setup wireless in our office. Instead of going to each laptop &
manually setting Windows to manage wireless and then adding the SSID,
network encryption & network key, is there a way to remotely add this info to
each laptop either thru a profile or the registry?

Thx,

Hello LAM,
I have had similar ideas. I don't think there is an easy way to deploy this
particular information out to remote machines. You can always remote desktop
and manually add in the details. Of course you're still manually doing it
but it saves the trips to each station. You can create a whole new image
for each station and ghost that image out to all the machines, but this seems
a bit over the top. You can create a custom profile, capture it and store
it somewhere (like a server) but you still need to make a trip to each machine
and run the wizard.

I believe it to be best practice to manually punch the network pass phrase
key for the wireless encryption. This way to ensure the correct key is punched
in and confirmed. Hope this helps.



Danny Gallegos
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com

> We have just setup wireless in our office. Instead of going to each
> laptop & manually setting Windows to manage wireless and then adding
> the SSID, network encryption & network key, is there a way to remotely
> add this info to each laptop either thru a profile or the registry?
>
> Thx,
>

You might try using Windows Connect Now (WCN) to setup the wireless
parameters on a flash drive then use the flash drive to configure your
laptop clients.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/com...uy/cg0604.mspx

If you have older clients that do not support WCN you can copy the
appropriate encryption key from the \Smrtntky\Wsetting.txt file on the flash
drive into the wireless parameters on the client.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/com...604.mspx#EJCAC

I have never tried this but I suppose you could also copy the WCN
files/folder to a network accessible drive and users could run the
configuration or copy the files/folder to their laptop/PC for later use.

Of course this all may be moot if you have a large amount of clients to
configure...

Additionally you would need to manually change the resulting encryption type
on each client if your network uses WPA-PSK (AES) or WPA2 since WCN does not
support that. You will also need to manually copy the encryption key to any
wireless access point that does not have a USB port.

I do know that WCN works well for me in my small SoHo environment. In my
case I use WPA-PSK (AES) with two wireless clients.

--

Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
mutual benefit of all of us...
The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights...


"Danny Gallegos" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed). com...
> Hello LAM,
> I have had similar ideas. I don't think there is an easy way to deploy
> this particular information out to remote machines. You can always remote
> desktop and manually add in the details. Of course you're still manually
> doing it but it saves the trips to each station. You can create a whole
> new image for each station and ghost that image out to all the machines,
> but this seems a bit over the top. You can create a custom profile,
> capture it and store it somewhere (like a server) but you still need to
> make a trip to each machine and run the wizard.
> I believe it to be best practice to manually punch the network pass phrase
> key for the wireless encryption. This way to ensure the correct key is
> punched in and confirmed. Hope this helps.
>
>
> Danny Gallegos
> Roland Schorr & Tower
> http://www.rolandschorr.com
>
>> We have just setup wireless in our office. Instead of going to each
>> laptop & manually setting Windows to manage wireless and then adding
>> the SSID, network encryption & network key, is there a way to remotely
>> add this info to each laptop either thru a profile or the registry?
>>
>> Thx,
>>
>
>

Thank you both for your help, I will give those suggestions a try.


"Sooner Al [MVP]" wrote:

> You might try using Windows Connect Now (WCN) to setup the wireless
> parameters on a flash drive then use the flash drive to configure your
> laptop clients.
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/com...uy/cg0604.mspx
>
> If you have older clients that do not support WCN you can copy the
> appropriate encryption key from the \Smrtntky\Wsetting.txt file on the flash
> drive into the wireless parameters on the client.
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/com...604.mspx#EJCAC
>
> I have never tried this but I suppose you could also copy the WCN
> files/folder to a network accessible drive and users could run the
> configuration or copy the files/folder to their laptop/PC for later use.
>
> Of course this all may be moot if you have a large amount of clients to
> configure...
>
> Additionally you would need to manually change the resulting encryption type
> on each client if your network uses WPA-PSK (AES) or WPA2 since WCN does not
> support that. You will also need to manually copy the encryption key to any
> wireless access point that does not have a USB port.
>
> I do know that WCN works well for me in my small SoHo environment. In my
> case I use WPA-PSK (AES) with two wireless clients.
>
> --
>
> Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)
>
> Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
> mutual benefit of all of us...
> The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> rights...
>
>
> "Danny Gallegos" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed). com...
> > Hello LAM,
> > I have had similar ideas. I don't think there is an easy way to deploy
> > this particular information out to remote machines. You can always remote
> > desktop and manually add in the details. Of course you're still manually
> > doing it but it saves the trips to each station. You can create a whole
> > new image for each station and ghost that image out to all the machines,
> > but this seems a bit over the top. You can create a custom profile,
> > capture it and store it somewhere (like a server) but you still need to
> > make a trip to each machine and run the wizard.
> > I believe it to be best practice to manually punch the network pass phrase
> > key for the wireless encryption. This way to ensure the correct key is
> > punched in and confirmed. Hope this helps.
> >
> >
> > Danny Gallegos
> > Roland Schorr & Tower
> > http://www.rolandschorr.com
> >
> >> We have just setup wireless in our office. Instead of going to each
> >> laptop & manually setting Windows to manage wireless and then adding
> >> the SSID, network encryption & network key, is there a way to remotely
> >> add this info to each laptop either thru a profile or the registry?
> >>
> >> Thx,
> >>
> >
> >
>