ZyXEL Communications Wireless Gateway Series Comparison of EAP Authentication Types

ZyAIR Wireless Gateway Series User’s Guide

hiding client identity. However, PEAP only supports EAP methods, such as EAP-MD5 and EAP- MSCHAPv2, for client authentication.

For added security, certificate-based authentications (EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS and PEAP) use dynamic keys for data encryption. They are often deployed in corporate environments, but for public deployment, simple user name and password pair is more practical. The following table is a comparison of the features of four authentication types.

Comparison of EAP Authentication Types

	EAP-MD5	EAP-TLS	EAP-TTLS	PEAP
Mutual	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Authentication
Certificate – Client	No	Yes	Optional	Optional
Certificate – Server	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dynamic Key	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Exchange
Credential Security	None	Strong	Strong	Strong
Deployment	Easy	Hard	Moderate	Moderate
Difficulty
Wireless Security	Poor	Best	Good	Good
Client Identity	No	No	Yes	Yes
Protection

F-2 Types of EAP Authentication