How do I create a WPAD.DAT

I also found thsi interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol

You can use this also with group policy.
Tolinrome

I have tried using GPO to push settings to IE and for some reason it is very flakey. Sometimes the settings don't take. I have spent weeks on trying to figure out the problem including asking for help on here and nobody was able to resolve it so I gave up on that approach. What im getting is that WPAD.DAT is just a renamed PAC file. I guess what I need are some PAC tutorials. I may also be going about this the wrong way. I just want to be able to program websites to bypass ISA. This is how I get there in ISA 2004:

Networks ---> Internal Properties ---> Web Browser

Directly access computers specified in the domains tab

Do I even need a wpad.dat file for this?

Ok for the first part, setting up the gpo settings, how did you do it? We did it at our place and its pretty basic. We just created a gpo and we linked it to a OU with all the users accounts in it, so everytime a user logs in theyre automatically set to whatever proxy settings you put in the gpo. User Configuration>WIndows Settings>Internet Explorer Maintenance>Connection/Proxy Settings and then just enable the policy settings to what you like. run from the command prompt: c:\gpupdate /force -that will reapply all gpo's.

Sorry, but Im not really sure if I understand correctly what you mean by: Networks ---> Internal Properties ---> Web Browser Directly access computers specified in the domains tab

If you have an ISA server on your network its either your proxy server or firewall. Im assuming its your proxy server and you want to bypass it and directly go to through the firewall? Then just change the proxy settings in IE to whatever the firewall settings are or leave the IE connection settings blank.
Hope this helps.

Hi,

I am assuming you are trying to Automaticly detect the ISA Server from the Firewall client.

Editing the WPAD.DAT is not possible however you can create and place the WPAP.DAT file on a web server and mention the IP in the DNS and DHCP.

Refer to the  Alternative Configuration of the following link.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/isa/2004/plan/automaticdiscovery.mspx

Just out of curiosity why do you want to change in the file.


Kumar

Well can't you put all your interner browser settings in this file? How do you use your proxy to automatically configure browsers who are connecting to it? I want to do this because not every computer who comes into my network is part of the domain and im not going to join them to the domain just for one day so I can push GPO's to them.

Well i havent edited the WPAD.DAT file so cannot give you much details abt that.

Check the following article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309814&sd=tech

This article will tell you how to publish WPAD information. It is not important that the clients should be a part of the domain and you do not need any GPO for this.

Also if you have your WPAD file you can publish it on a Web Server internal in your network and In place of the ISA server mention the name of the server with the WPAD file.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Kumar