The mailing list for users of the eduroam Configuration Assistant Tool (CAT)

[Tomasz Wolniewicz <twoln AT umk.pl>]

Hi All,

  there was some discussion on this list concerning how CAT installs 
additional profiles on Windows and (as a result) how networks are shown 
to the users.

Our initial approach was that all additional networks (defined by the 
admins) were pushed into a single profile "organisation custom network". 
The result of this was that:

1. If user's device sees an SSID defined in these custom networks then 
Windows would display the name of the the profile and not the SSID, 
which clearly may be quite confusing.

2. If user's device sees a Hotspot 2.0 (Paspoint) network with the 
identifier defined in the organisation custom networks then Windows will 
behave better - it will be two lines, something like

For Windows 10:

The SSID
The profile name, Hotspot 2.0

For Windows 11:

The SSID
The profile name, Passpoint

Things get more messy once the user connects to one of these Hotspot 
2.0/Passpoint networks. Then the following happens:

On Windows 10:

If you place the cursor on the networks icon, you will see that you are 
connected to the SSID you have selected; also when you go into the 
networks list you will also see the SSID (with no mention of the profile 
name that you saw before), however if you click the properties of this 
network then the header of the screen will show the profile name and not 
the SSID name (the SSID is listed among other network properties)

On Windows 11:

If you place the cursor on the networks icon, you will see that you are 
connected to a network with the profile name (no mention of the SSID); 
when you click the networks icon you will see various submenus and under 
WIFI you still see the profile name (not the SSID). If you now go into 
the networks list then you will see the SSID you are connected to - no 
mention of the profile name this time; finally if you go into the 
network properties, you will see the same as for W10 - the heading being 
the profile name.

I think you can see that Windows should really clean up their approach 
to showing the Hotspot 2.0 networks. What one needs to realise is that 
the very idea of using special identifier for such networks is that 
their SSIDs can be "anything" and you cannot predict them, therefore 
when creating profiles we have no way of guessing the SSIDs therefore we 
just need to use a common profile name and users will need to get used 
to how things are displayed for them. At the moment the Hotspot 2.0 
approach is not very common therefore in reality this will not be really 
happening much.


To summarise we would want to propose a change:

for local SSIDs we will simply create separate profiles - each with the 
name matching the SSID - this way they will be displayed just as SSIDs;

for Hotspot 2.0 networks we will create a single profile but will try to 
make the name of the profile more meaningful.

The updated installer will also need to remove the profiles that were 
installed previously so that there are no conflicts.

This change will require some testing therefore I expect the update to 
be ready by 23rd of September.

Cheers

Tomasz Wolniewicz


--
Tomasz Wolniewicz
          twoln AT umk.pl        http://www.home.umk.pl/~twoln

Uniwersyteckie Centrum Informatyczne   Information&Communication Technology 
Centre
Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika         Nicolaus Copernicus University,
pl. Rapackiego 1, Torun                pl. Rapackiego 1, Torun, Poland
            tel: +48-56-611-2750; tel kom.: +48-693-032-576