LevelOne WAP-0003, User Manual, Page: 57 / 105

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APPENDIX C: 802.1x Authentication Setup
There are three essential components to the 802.1x infrastructure: (1) Supplicant, (2)
Authe nticator 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 encryp tion 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 infrastructure, each of these wireless clients would
have to be authenticated by the Radius server, which would grant the authorized client and
notified the Access Point to open up a communication port to be used for the granted client.
There are 2 Extensive Authentication Protocol (EAP) methods supported: (1) MD5 and (2) TLS.
802.11 Wireless
Access Points
Support 802.1X
RADIUS
Server
Authentication Request
Internet/
Intranet
Authentication Success
802.11 Wireless
Clients
Support 802.1X
Public
802.11
Wireless
Networks