How Secure Is Your Wireless Network? Safeguarding Your Wi-Fi LAN

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the 802.1x framework and EAP authentication methods. 802.1x has three basic components: a supplicant, an authenticator, and an authentication server. When you are selecting hardware for your environment, always remember that 802.1x (as well as your chosen EAP method) must be supported across all components.

802.1x is extremely effective in securing 802.11 networks because it supports dynamic key generation and is not vulnerable to the many attacks that have plagued the 802.11 protocol. Unlike legacy WEP, which used static keys that everybody shared, 802.1x can now generate dynamic, per-user or per-session keys. Furthermore, now that we can uniquely identify users, we can perform all kinds of AAA activities ...