At Ferris State University, the network implements a system called Cisco Clean Access (CCA). This is a system designed to keep all Windows-based computers up-to-date, secure, and authorized to use the network. On the Windows-side of things, it works decently. All that is truly required is the installation of Clean Access Manager, Norton Antivirus, and setting up your Windows Update settings to point to FSU’s Windows Update Server.

This is totally different if you use a Mac (or Linux, or any other OS). While there is technically a Mac client for CCA, it does not work as well as the Windows-based client. Luckily, there is still a backup plan for other operating systems: CCA will redirect you to a web-based login page, you fill in your user credentials, and bam! you’re on the network. Only a few caveats:

• If you disconnect from the network for any reason (i.e. you’re using a laptop and you close the lid) for more than 5 minutes, you will have to re-login
• Occasionally there are issues with computer identification and DHCP: I have run into issues where I was logged in, closed my laptop for 15 minutes, and was given an “IP in use” error. This has happened on more than one occasion, and not only to me, but a few of my classmates.
• It’s just a hassle to have your web session interrupted by a Java app (and on that point, why is it a Java app? I’m pretty sure a standards-compliant web form would suffice) asking you to login

To get around most of these issues, I came up with a script to automatically login with my iMac. Essentially, it’s just a shell/bash script that is executed by launchd (you could use Cron on *NIX) every 5 minutes.

Continue reading…