ZyXEL Communications P-660HN-F1A, User Manual

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P-660HN-F1A User’s Guide
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Certificates
13.1 Overview
This chapter describes how your P-660HN-F1A can use certificates as a means of
authenticating wireless clients. It gives background information about public-key
certificates and explains how to use them.
A certificate contains the certificate owner’s identity and public key. Certificates
provide a way to exchange public keys for use in authentication.
Figure 94 Certificates Example
In the figure above, the P-660HN-F1A (Z) checks the identity of the notebook (A)
using a certificate before granting it access to the network.
13.1.1 What You Need to Know About Certificates
Certification Authority
A Certification Authority (CA) issues certificates and guarantees the identity of
each certificate owner. There are commercial certification authorities like
CyberTrust or VeriSign and government certification authorities. You can use the
P-660HN-F1A to generate certification requests that contain identifying
information and public keys and then send the certification requests to a
certification authority.
Certificate File Formats
The certification authority certificate that you want to import has to be in one of
these file formats: