IPSK Authentication without RADIUS

Overview 

When setting up an enterprise wireless network, it is common to configure WPA2 Password authentication to onboard users onto the wireless network. However, this method has limitations. For example, IT administrators cannot use different passwords on the same SSIDs to assign different VLANs or firewall rules to groups of users. While using 802.1X authentication, IT administrators can provide this level of granularity; however, it’s not always possible to use 802.1X because not all devices support it.

Therefore, IT administrators are left with two options: 

• They can provision a new SSID with a dedicated password for each device type. Unfortunately, this creates a lot of RF overhead and lowers possible throughputs.

• They can create a single SSID with one password shared among all devices incapable of 802.1X (RADIUS) authentication. However, this approach has significant security and management overhead issues. IT administrators must reconfigure every device with a new password if this single password gets compromised.

Meraki solves this use case with Identity Pre-Shared Key (IPSK) without RADIUS. This feature allows you to configure multiple passwords for a single SSID and assign different Group Policies to each password without the added complexity of configuring and maintaining a RADIUS server. Furthermore, devices that cannot use 802.1X authentication (e.g., IoT devices) can also benefit from this feature.

This document will walk you through configuring IPSK without RADIUS in the dashboard.

Feature Requirements and Limitations

• All APs in your network must be Wi-Fi 5 Wave 2 (MR20, MR30H, MR33, MR42, MR42E, MR52, MR53, MR53E, MR70, MR74. MR84), Wi-Fi 6 (MR28, MR36, MR36H, MR44, MR46, MR46E, MR56, MR76, MR78, MR86, MR45/55), Wi-Fi 6E (MR57, CW9162I, CW9164I, CW9166I) or newer.

• APs must be running MR 27.1 or newer firmware.

• iPSK without RADIUS does not support WPA3 encryption.

• iPSK without RADIUS supports up to 50 iPSKs per SSID in the firmware versions MR 27.X, 28.X, and 29.X. Each PSK must be at least 8 to 63 alphanumeric characters long.

• iPSK without RADIUS supports up to 5,000 iPSKs per SSID in the firmware versions MR 30.1 and newer.

• When using configuration templates, please ensure that the SSID name for child networks is not overwritten when using iPSK without RADIUS. Clients will fail to authenticate if the SSID name differs from the one configured on the template level. 

Configuration

Configuration on the dashboard is as follows:

1. Navigate to Wireless > Configure > Access Control.

2. Under SSID, select the SSID from the drop-down that you want to configure.

3. Select IPSK without RADIUS from the Association Requirements section of the page.

 

 

4. Select the Add an Identity PSK option.

 

 

5. Here you can define a name for the PSK to Group Policy mapping and define a unique PSK.

6. Once the PSK is defined you have the option to select the Group Policy from the drop-down that are defined in the dashboard. Please refer to the Creating and Applying Group Policies article to add a new Group Policy.

 

7. Click Add and Save changes.

8. Once configured you can use the show button to see the PSK configured for each mapping

9. Clicking on the Name of the PSK to Group policy mapping will allow you to modify the mapping on the dashboard.
 

 

10. Clicking the Add button on the top right will allow to add new PSKs to the SSID and clicking on the checkbox and clicking Delete will allow removing the PSK from the SSID

Monitoring