802.1x Roles

Role of the 802.1x Client Software

• Supplicant is responsible for initiating on authenication sessions with the authenticator
• Supplicant software can be included in the operating system or you can install a third party supplicant

Role of 802.1x Authenticator

• The authenticator is refered to as the NAD (Network Access Device) such as a switch, WLAN controller, firewall, etc..
• The supplicant is challenged by the authenicator, the supplicant enters credentials and the NAD passes credentitals to the authentication server. The authenticator also enforces policies on each 802.1x port.

Role of the 802.1x Authentication Server

• Performs Authentication, Authorization and Accounting
• Validates the authentication credentials of the supplicants that are forwarded by the NAD
• Policy look-up based on the supplicant idenitiy and group affiliation and passes the policy to the NAD. This can be the for of DACL (Downloadable ACL) or VLAN assignment
• An authentication server for Cisco can include Cisco ISE or Cisco ACS

Role of the Dirctory Server in 802.1x

• Cisco ISE supports 
• local user database (does not scale)
• Supports Active Directory
• LDAP
• RSA Tokens
• RSA Secure ID
• Certificate