Connecting to "Colby Secure Wireless" on Mac OSX 10.4 and OSX 10.5

NOTE : Connecting to the secure wireless network requires a Colby College digital certificate.  To obtain a certificate or for more information on Colby digital certificates, click here.

It is recommended that this procedure is carried out only in areas where the ‘Colby Secure Wireless’ network is available.

1.    Select the ‘Colby Secure Wireless’ network from the Airport program menu icon on the OSX menu bar:

2.    You are not required to enter a username and password in the dialog box (your digital certificate is used for authentication), so leave those fields blank. 

Leave the 802.1x configuration selection as ‘Automatic’ and the ‘Remember password’ dialog box unchecked.

3.    You will receive a dialog box (sometimes this takes several seconds to pop up) about the 'eapolclient' (the Wireless authentication client) requesting access to your keychain.  This access is required in order to use the digital certificate stored there to authenticate and encrypt your wireless connection. 

Select ‘Always Allow’ to continue.**

**Important note for OSX 10.5 users: There is currently a bug in most variants of OS X 10.5  that requires you to select 'allow' every time you connect to the network.  Selecting 'always allow' will cause the connection to fail.  Unfortunately you will be required to answer this question each time you connect to the Secure Wireless Network.  ITS will update this page when this issue is corrected.

4.    You may receive another dialog box requesting verification of the Colby digital server certificate.  Select ‘Continue' or 'Always Trust.'

5.    You should now be connected to ‘Colby Secure Wireless.’  To verify this, select the Airport icon in the program bar – the icon should show black bars indicating is connected.  When you click on the icon, you should see ‘Colby Secure Wireless’ as checked: 

Selecting ‘Open Internet Connect’ from this menu will provide you with the status of your connection.  The status at the bottom should read ‘Connected to “Colby Secure Wireless.”

6.    You should now be able to connect to the ‘Colby Secure Wireless’ network whenever it is available.