Re: 802.1x RADIUS Deployment in Wireless LAN

[Eric Hagen <eric () sandpile net>]

Well, I can relay a bit of experience using Cisco's "Secure Access 
Control" platform.  You need version 3.2 to properly support the EAP 
that is required for authentication over 802.1x.  It's a Windows 
package, but I it's not that inexpensive compared to the open-source route.

We used Cisco Aironet 1200 access points and got the WPA/TKIP 
authentication to work.  That's a dynamic key system and has 100% of 
it's authentication through the SAC server.

We standardized on 3com client cards because they include strong 
software support for WPA as well as the 802.11i draft standard with AES 
encryption.  The Cisco client card was good too, but the range wasn't as 
good for one reason or another.

Difficulty?  Fortunately, we had a few experts on hand, so it wasn't all 
that difficult at all.  Unfortunately, for those unfamiliar with all of 
the technologies (including Cisco IOS) it would be very difficult.

Also, I believe that the wireless card's drivers must support the WPA 
authentication, since it uses a layer-2 encapsulation on the auth 
packets (someone correct me if I'm wrong here).

Eric



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------