ZyXEL Communications NWA-3500, User Manual

Page: 280 / 324

Appendix E Wireless LANs
ZyXEL NWA-3500 User’s Guide
280
Wireless security methods available on the ZyXEL Device are data encryption, wireless client
authentication, restricting access by device MAC address and hiding the ZyXEL Device
identity.
The following figure shows the relative effectiveness of these wireless security methods
available on your ZyXEL Device.
"
You must enable the same wireless security settings on the ZyXEL Device and
on all wireless clients that you want to associate with it.
IEEE 802.1x
In June 2001, the IEEE 802.1x standard was designed to extend the features of IEEE 802.11 to
support extended authentication as well as providing additional accounting and control
features. It is supported by Windows XP and a number of network devices. Some advantages
of IEEE 802.1x are:
• User based identification that allows for roaming.
• Support for RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service, RFC 2138, 2139) for
centralized user profile and accounting management on a network RADIUS server.
• Support for EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol, RFC 2486) that allows additional
authentication methods to be deployed with no changes to the access point or the wireless
clients.
RADIUS
RADIUS is based on a client-server model that supports authentication, authorization and
accounting. The access point is the client and the server is the RADIUS server. The RADIUS
server handles the following tasks:
• Authentication
Determines the identity of the users.
• Authorization
Table 102 Wireless Security Levels
SECURITY
LEVEL
SECURITY TYPE
Least
Secure
Most Secure
Unique SSID (Default)
Unique SSID with Hide SSID Enabled
MAC Address Filtering
WEP Encryption
IEEE802.1x EAP with RADIUS Server Authentication
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
WPA2