13-10
Cisco IE 2000 Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-25866-01
Chapter 13 Configuring IEEE 802.1x Port-Based Authentication
Information About Configuring IEEE 802.1x Port-Based Authentication
In multiple-hosts mode, you can attach multiple hosts to a single 802.1x-enabled port. Figure 13-5 on
page 13-10 shows 802.1x port-based authentication in a wireless LAN. In this mode, only one of the
attached clients must be authorized for all clients to be granted network access. If the port becomes
unauthorized (reauthentication fails or an EAPOL-logoff message is received), the switch denies
network access to all of the attached clients. In this topology, the wireless access point is responsible for
authenticating the clients attached to it, and it also acts as a client to the switch.
Figure 13-5 Multiple Host Mode Example
The switch supports multidomain authentication (MDA), which allows both a data device and a voice
device, such as an IP Phone (Cisco or non-Cisco), to connect to the same switch port. For more
information, see the “Multidomain Authentication” section on page 13-10.
Multidomain Authentication
The switch supports multidomain authentication (MDA), which allows both a data device and voice
device, such as an IP phone (Cisco or non-Cisco), to authenticate on the same switch port. The port is
divided into a data domain and a voice domain.
MDA does not enforce the order of device authentication. However, for best results, we recommend that
a voice device is authenticated before a data device on an MDA-enabled port.
Follow these guidelines for configuring MDA:
To configure a switch port for MDA, see the “Configuring the Host Mode” section on page 13-38.
You must configure the voice VLAN for the IP phone when the host mode is set to multidomain. For
more information, see Chapter 17, “Configuring VLANs.”
To authorize a voice device, the AAA server must be configured to send a Cisco Attribute-Value
(AV) pair attribute with a value of device-traffic-class=voice. Without this value, the switch
treats the voice device as a data device.
The guest VLAN and restricted VLAN features only apply to the data devices on an MDA-enabled
port. The switch treats a voice device that fails authorization as a data device.
If more than one device attempts authorization on either the voice or the data domain of a port, it is
error disabled.
Until a device is authorized, the port drops its traffic. Non-Cisco IP phones or voice devices are
allowed into both the data and voice VLANs. The data VLAN allows the voice device to contact a
DHCP server to obtain an IP address and acquire the voice VLAN information. After the voice
device starts sending on the voice VLAN, its access to the data VLAN i s blocked.
101229
Workstations
(clients)
Authentication
server
(RADIUS)