Question/Suggestion about WEP key changing

[rjseals]

Hi, I am an administrator at a school district where we have a wireless access point in each school. I want to change the wep key every two weeks or a month. Does anyone know of a way or have any suggestions on how to create either a batch file or executable that changes the wep key in a users machine. I would assume you would just somehow edit the registry and put the new key in.

Ideally I would just push out the file that the user would run and they could just run it.

Any suggestions.

 

[bcastner]

My sympathies as to your plight.

I was able to script changes in Linksys routers through cgi scripting, but the clients remain the issue.

If the clients are using many of the manufacturer's client monitoring tools for access settings you can often replace the default profile without requiring a registry change, just a little digging as to the name of the file. The file change than could be pushed through Group Policy, remote access scripting, or the manipulation of the mandatory profile if used. The logon script is a resource but requires a little scripting effort to replace the file at a certain time for a future event (the change at the router/AP).

If it is all Cisco clients, they offer rather elegant ways to handle the scripting chores; study their details as it can often be imitated as a procedure for other makes if they look first for a default profile for settings.

WPA should handle this issue in the near future, but it is uncertain how or if 802.11b legacy clients will participate.

I encourage you to look beyound WEP even now. The RADIUS and other 802.1x is a mature technology and a quite frankly better choice given your concerns. I particularly like the flexible clients now available from Funk Software (the Odyssey Suite) and others. These often can use your existing Windows or Linux authentication servers for users to handle wireless authentication without a great deal of effort.

Best wishes.