MSM 710/720 pass through authentication

[nbarrs]

Hi

I need to find a way of passing through given MAC addresses without authenticating at all, not just bypassing the HTML login page.  We use a central Radius for multiple networks and certain devices on each of those networks are currently set up with user accounts to automatically authenticate.  Rather than add more user licences to my third party Radius (which will cost multiple thousand £) I would prefer to remove these devices from authentication altogether and just pass all traffic through, either authenticating locally on the MSM or not having to authenticate at all.

Please could you advise whether what I am asking is possible.

Thanks

[Glen Willms]

You can use the controller's local user table to provide RADIUS MAC authentication. 

Use either the controller or Guest Management Software to create local user accounts with the username and password as the MAc address of the device. The MAC address should be lower case and not have any delimeters. 

You may need to create a special VSC for Mac authentication. I don't know if you can use the MAC authentication to bypass other authentication mechanisms in the same VSC. 

The manuals here explain it reasonably well. http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&contentType=SupportManual&prodTypeId=12883&prodSeriesId=3963981&printver=true

[nbarrs]

Thanks Glen, just to clarify, will the controller then reference its own Radius table before the central one, or is it either/or?  I.e. will devices not in the controller's own table then get passed out to the external Radius to authenticate?

[nbarrs]

Just further on this.  One of my team has been looking at doing this today but although the manual suggests you should be able to do it for wired devices as well as wireless (although only on the default VSC), the inbuilt help in the controller suggests otherwise, and he can't get it to work as the manual suggests.  We checked the firmware and we are looking at the right manual for the firmware.

Is this a restriction of the controller, that this MAC authentication is only possible for wireless devices despite what the manual asserts?

Thanks

[Glen Willms]

I'm pretty sure you can. A VSC can be bound to a port on a MSM317 - There should be no need to treat it differently.