3Com Wireless LAN CSR Creation

Before you can generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for your 3Com Wireless Lan Switch and Controller, you will need to create the private key from which your CSR can then in turn be created.

  • Running the following command should elicit the response key pair generated and generate a 2048-bit private key.

    WX1200#crypto generate key web 2048

    In the above example, 'web' represents a certificate for web access so users can use a web page to log onto an unencrypted SSID. To create a certificate for 'eap' (802.1X access for network users who can access SSIDs encrypted by WEP or WPA, or users connecting with wired authentication ports) or 'admin' access (through your 3Com Wireless Switch Manager or Web Manager), use those aliases in place of 'web.'

  • After you have finished creating your key, go ahead and run the following command to create a CSR for certificate signing. You will send the CSR to COMODO, and they will use it to generate the certificate that you will install to your device.

    crypto generate request web

    You will want to use same option (admin, eap, or web) as was used in creating the key, depending on the function for which your certificate is being generated.

  • You will then be prompted to enter information that will be included in your certificate by the certificate authority:

    1. Country Name: US (find your 2 digit country code)
    2. State Name: NJ (your state or province)
    3. Locality Name: Clifton (usually the location of your main office, not necessarily your current location)
    4. Organizational Name: COMODO Inc (your company name)
    5. Organizational Unit: IT (your business unit)
    6. Common Name: www.example.com (the FQDN by which you will connect to your device, can also be an internal name)
    7. Email Address: [email protected]
    8. Unstructured Name: (leave blank, if possible, otherwise enter NA and continue)

    If completed successfully, you will be provided with an encrypted text file called a CSR. You will copy and paste the entire body of this file to COMODO when requesting your certificate.

Installing Your 3Com Wireless LAN Certificate

Once you have received your certificate files back from COMODO, you will need to install them to the same key from which they were generated.

  • crypto certificate web

    Once again, if you did not use 'web' when creating your CSR and key, you will not use 'web' here, instead use 'eap' or 'admin.'

  • Next, using a text editor, open the your_domain.crt file you received from COMODO and copy/paste the entire body of that file (including the Begin and End Certificate lines) into the CLI.
  • Your certificate should now be installed. Before it will work correctly, you will need to install the COMODORSACA.crt file that should have been sent to you along with your your_domain.crt file. If you did not receive this file, you can download it from inside your account (this is called your Intermediate Certificate file).

  • Run the following at the command line:

    crypto ca-certificate web

    One last time, you will substitute 'web' for 'eap' or 'admin' if that is what you have been doing.

  • You will be prompted to enter the text of the certificate. Once again you will open your file with a text editor and paste the entire body of that file into the provided prompt.

The 3Com Wireless Lan Switch will not allow for the installing of multiple intermediate certificate files. If you were provided with multiple intermediate certificates, this is usually for additional ubiquity purposes and should not impact your clients or connection issues in almost all cases. Although ideally all intermediate files would be installed, that is not possible and fortunately it is not necessary.