Cisco 7800 Series Administration Manual page 95

Cisco IP Phone Administration
• Cisco Catalyst Switch (or other third-party switch): The switch must support 802.1X, so it can act as the
authenticator and pass the messages between the phone and the authentication server. After the exchange
completes, the switch grants or denies the phone access to the network.
You must perform the following actions to configure 802.1X.
• Configure the other components before you enable 802.1X Authentication on the phone.
• Configure PC Port—The 802.1X standard does not consider VLANs and thus recommends that only a
single device should be authenticated to a specific switch port. However, some switches (including Cisco
Catalyst switches) support multidomain authentication. The switch configuration determines whether
you can connect a PC to the PC port of the phone.
• Configure Voice VLAN—Because the 802.1X standard does not account for VLANs, you should
configure this setting based on the switch support.
Related Topics
Cisco Unified Communications Manager
• Enabled—If you are using a switch that supports multidomain authentication, you can enable the
PC port and connect a PC to it. In this case, Cisco IP Phones support proxy EAPOL-Logoff to
monitor the authentication exchanges between the switch and the attached PC. For more information
about IEEE 802.1X support on the Cisco Catalyst switches, see the Cisco Catalyst switch
configuration guides at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/tsd_products_support_series_home.html
• Disabled—If the switch does not support multiple 802.1X-compliant devices on the same port, you
should disable the PC Port when 802.1X authentication is enabled. If you do not disable this port
and subsequently attempt to attach a PC to it, the switch denies network access to both the phone
and the PC.
• Enabled—If you are using a switch that supports multidomain authentication, you can continue to
use the voice VLAN.
• Disabled—If the switch does not support multidomain authentication, disable the Voice VLAN and
consider assigning the port to the native VLAN.
Cisco IP Phone 7800 Series Administration Guide for Cisco Unified Communications Manager
Documentation, on page xiii
802.1x Authentication
81