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APPENDIX B: 802.1x Authentication
Setup
There are three essential components to the 802.1x infrastructure: (1) Supplicant,
(2) Authenticator and (3) Server. The 802.1x security supports both MD5 and TLS
Extensive Authentication Protocol (EAP). The 802.1x Authentication is a
complement to the current WEP encryption used in wireless network. The current
security weakness of WEP encryption is that there is no key management and no
limitation for the duration of key lifetime. 802.1x Authentication offers key
management, which includes key per user and key per session, and limits the
lifetime of the keys to certain duration. Thus, key decryption by unauthorized
attacker becomes extremely difficult, and the wireless network is safely secured.
We will introduce the 802.1x Authentication infrastructure as a whole and going into
details of the setup for each essential component in 802.1x authentication.
802.1x Authentication Infrastructure
The Infrastructure diagram showing above illustrates that a group of 802.11
wireless clients is trying to form a 802.11 wireless network with the Access Point in
order to have access to the Internet/Intranet. In 802.1x authentication
802.11 Wireless
Access Points Support 802.1X
RADIUS
Server
A
uthentication Request
Internet/
Intranet
Authentication Success
802.11 Wireless
Clients Support 802.1
X
Public
802.11
Wireless
Networks