When you want to login to a (wireless) network using 802.1x and it’s not standard by using TTLS/MSCHAPv2 (but TTLS/PAP instead) you can’t directly log in to. See this article at Apple on what is ‘allowed’. That’s nothing new because we had the same issues on previous version of the operating system, just some manual tweaks and we were good to go. Until now! On OSX Lion our friends at Apple decided to discard the well-known ‘+’ from the page so you can’t add it in 🙁
See for yourself at Systempreferences – Networking – Advanced – 802.1x. You will see the squares but no + or – signs. Performing an upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion you won’t notice as existing configurations are transferred over. How did Apple provide for a solution? Simple, go to your sysadmin and request a profile, which could end up a dead-end obviously, more likely you want to solution it yourself. Which we can, even with a product we are already familiar with.
Download the iPhone Configuration Utility and create a new profile just like making them for iPhones. I won’t go into to much detail as mostly its self explaining. Fill the primary fields of a “Configuration profile”, click in WiFi and add the options specific to your network and “Export” it. The file you will end up with you can transfer to your Lion install and double-click which will install it into profiles. Now you can be a happy network user again, just like you used to.