My brilliant IT department has just implemented what they are calling NAC: Network Access Control. Previously, I could use my personal MBP to access our internal network at work and do everything I needed (mostly through Parallels). However, as of this past Monday, I am completely locked out because of "NAC". I think it is some type of internal firewall implementation that allows only company-owned machines to access. I can't even VPN in!
In any event, after being pissed about it for a few minutes, I tried to see what I could do to get around this, using my company-owned IBM Lenovo T510. I thought about and tried Windows 7 ICS, sharing the wired internal connection over wifi. Well, I learned quickly that you can't even do this in Win 7! Argh! How do people work with this day in and day out? However, I did hit upon turning off ICS, bridging the wired and wireless connections, creating an ad hoc wireless network, and connecting the wireless side of the bridge to the ad hoc wireless network.
This worked! But only if I have wifi security turned off. If I enable WPA2 on the ad hoc network, I cannot connect my MBP. I immediately get an error when I enter the password with no explanation as to why I can't connect. This link seems to imply that this is a bug:
Unable to connect my mac to a window 7 computer to computer network. - Microsoft Answers
Any ideas how to get this to work? I can't use something like Connectify or Virtual Router (I've tried) because it gives the MBP a 192.x.x.x address, instead of an address on my company's network. 192 gets me Internet access, but no access to internal resources.
Even better would be if someone knows how to hide the SSID for the ad hoc network.
Steve
If you find something better, please let me know. 
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