Chapter 14

802.1X Authentication

802.1X is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard that provides an authentication framework for WLANs. 802.1x uses the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) to exchange messages during the authentication process. The authentication protocols that operate inside the 802.1X framework that are suitable for wireless networks include EAP-Transport Layer Security (EAP-TLS), Protected EAP (PEAP), and EAP-Tunneled TLS (EAP-TTLS). These protocols allow the network to authenticate the client while also allowing the client to authenticate the network.

This chapter describes the following topics:

"Understanding 802.1X Authentication" on page 192

"Configuring 802.1X Authentication" on page 195

"Sample Configurations" on page 204

"Performing Advanced Configuration Options for 802.1X" on page 220

Other types of authentication not discussed in this section can be found in the following sections of this guide:

Captive portal authentication: "Configuring Captive Portal Authentication Profiles" on page 246

VPN authentication: "Planning a VPN Configuration" on page 271

MAC authentication: "Configuring MAC-Based Authentication" on page 189

Stateful 802.1x, stateful NTLM, and WISPr authentication: "Stateful and WISPr Authentication" on page 221

Understanding 802.1X Authentication

802.1x authentication consists of three components:

The supplicant, or client, is the device attempting to gain access to the network. You can configure the Dell user- centric network to support 802.1x authentication for wired users as well as wireless users.

The authenticator is the gatekeeper to the network and permits or denies access to the supplicants.

The Dell controller acts as the authenticator, relaying information between the authentication server and supplicant. The EAP type must be consistent between the authentication server and supplicant and is transparent to the controller.

The authentication server provides a database of information required for authentication and informs the authenticator to deny or permit access to the supplicant.

The 802.1X authentication server is typically an EAP-compliant Remote Access Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server which can authenticate either users (through passwords or certificates) or the client computer.

An example of an 802.1X authentication server is the Internet Authentication Service (IAS) in Windows (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc759077(WS.10).aspx).

Dell user-centric networks, you can terminate the 802.1x authentication on the controller. The controller passes user authentication to its internal database or to a “backend” non-802.1X server. This feature, also called AAA FastConnect, is useful for deployments where an 802.1X EAP-compliant RADIUS server is not available or required for authentication.

Dell PowerConnect W-Series ArubaOS 6.2 User Guide

802.1X Authentication 192

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Dell 6.2 manual Understanding 802.1X Authentication

6.2 specifications

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