ZyXEL Communications Prestige 652, User Manual, Page: 85 / 521

Prestige 652 Series User’s Guide
Wireless LAN Setup 6-9
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Accounting
Keeps track of the client’s network activity.
RADIUS is a simple package exchange in which your Prestige acts as a message relay between the wireless
station and the network RADIUS server.
Types of RADIUS Messages
The following types of RADIUS messages are exchanged between the access point and the RADIUS server
for user authentication:
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Access-Request
Sent by an access point requesting authentication.
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Access-Reject
Sent by a RADIUS server rejecting access.
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Access-Accept
Sent by a RADIUS server allowing access.
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Access-Challenge
Sent by a RADIUS server requesting more information in order to allow access. The access point
sends a proper response from the user and then sends another Access-Request message.
The following types of RADIUS messages are exchanged between the access point and the RADIUS server
for user accounting:
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Accounting-Request
Sent by the access point requesting accounting.
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Accounting-Response
Sent by the RADIUS server to indicate that it has started or stopped accounting.
In order to ensure network security, the access point and the RADIUS server use a shared secret key, which
is a password, they both know. The key is not sent over the network. In addition to the shared key, password
information exchanged is also encrypted to protect the network from unauthorized access.
6.7.3 EAP Authentication Overview
EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) is an authentication protocol that runs on top of the IEEE802.1x
transport mechanism in order to support multiple types of user authentication. By using EAP to interact with