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I have a member who is unable to connect his Windows XP based laptop to the LDS Access WiFi in any of our buildings. He used to be able to do that, and his laptop will connect properly at many "public" WiFi locations, but just not at our church buildings. It's not just at our stake either; he's tried several Church buildings in the area. In every case, using LDS Access with the correct passphrase does not connect.

The timing of when it stopped working for him is roughly when we replaced the Cisco 881 firewalls with the new Meraki firewalls. Is there something in the Meraki's that blocks connection of Windows XP systems?

Have him try using the latest ver of Firefox. It supports 256-bit AES encryption, while others may not.

ThomsonMA wrote:I have a member who is unable to connect his Windows XP based laptop to the LDS Access WiFi in any of our buildings. He used to be able to do that, and his laptop will connect properly at many "public" WiFi locations, but just not at our church buildings. It's not just at our stake either; he's tried several Church buildings in the area. In every case, using LDS Access with the correct passphrase does not connect.

The timing of when it stopped working for him is roughly when we replaced the Cisco 881 firewalls with the new Meraki firewalls. Is there something in the Meraki's that blocks connection of Windows XP systems?

Mikerowaved wrote:Have him try using the latest ver of Firefox. It supports 256-bit AES encryption, while others may not.

If his wireless client won't successfully authenticate, I would look at his network configuration. Make sure he is set to obtain IP and DNS server addresses automatically.

danpass wrote:Make sure he is set to obtain IP and DNS server addresses automatically.

One of the unique things about the church network is you're required to use the DNS server the church selects. All others are blocked. It's part of the filtering.

If the laptop is not set to use the DNS suggested by the DHCP, that's going to be a problem.

Thank you for all of the helpful suggestions. I'll work with the member to see if any of them help.

However, given that he uses his Windows XP laptops (three of them) at many other public WiFi locations and that they worked just fine with the Church network until just a few weeks ago, I'm not sure the problem lies with his systems. (And yes, I've been around the block a few times and know that most of the time it is a user error.)

Can anyone address my original question about whether Windows XP is blocked by the new Meraki firewalls? Do any of you have an XP-based system that is able to connect to LDS Access via WiFi where the firewall is a Meraki?

I'd try it myself, but I don't have access to an XP based system any more.

Thanks!