Problem with iPad & iPods connecting to school's network

[hoffmant]

I'm a HS teacher and Tech Integration coach for a small school district. On of my duties is managing our iPods & iPads (we have a few dozen iPods & about 20 iPads, K-12) and working with teacher to use them within their curriculum.

After updating several of the devices to 5.0 & then 5.01, we're having some real problems. Since we're required to utilize web filters as a school, we have a proxy that all internet traffic goes through. I have the iOS devices set correctly (manual proxy settings, etc.). However, on some of the devices some of the time, the username/password authentication box pops up for the proxy server, and no matter how many times we enter the correct credentials, the box keeps popping up, rendering the device basically unusable.

This doesn't happen on the devices still running 4.3.5. On those, the authentication box comes up, a username & password are entered, and everything works just fine. Also, the devices on 5.01 work ok sometimes, but when they don't, the persistent authentication requests make the devices completely unusable (unless I turn WiFi off completely).

I've spoke with our Network Administrator / IT guy about it, but he's pretty Apple-phobic. And I don't understand enough about the backend network stuff to help him.

Any ideas? Is there something obvious on the iOS settings side that I might be missing (I realize that, without specific details, this is probably a difficult question)? Anything I can offer our IT guy in the way of advice or help?

Thanks!

 

[dotme]

I don't know about the iOS specific issues you're experiencing - maybe others here can offer some device fixes for that. What I can do is propose an alternate option that may or may not be workable for you (Ask your IT guy)

I have a friend who is on the IT team in a district with a High School that has 1000+ enrollment. They not only grant teachers WiFi access, they grant Student access too. They use a Radius server and grant access by Mac Address, eliminating the need for the user to have to log in at all. They track who is who in a database these days, though they used to just do it on paper.

Maybe your IT person, given the low number of devices, could configure the school's WiFi to allow access based on Mac address - that would definitely take care of the issue you're experiencing, while still giving IT the control they need over who get's on that network.

DHCP can then be used to route all traffic through the Proxy (Default gateway).