Planet IGS-10020 Series User Manual page 252

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Device Roles
With 802.1X port-based authentication, the devices in the network have specific roles as shown below.
Client—the device (workstation) that requests access to the LAN and switch services and responds to requests from
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the switch. The workstation must be running 802.1X-compliant client software such as that offered in the Microsoft
Windows XP operating system. (The client is the supplicant in the IEEE 802.1X specification.)
Authentication server—performs the actual authentication of the client. The authentication server validates the
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identity of the client and notifies the switch whether or not the client is authorized to access the LAN and switch services.
Because the switch acts as the proxy, the authentication service is transparent to the client. In this release, the Remote
Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) security system with Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
extensions is the only supported authentication server; it is available in Cisco Secure Access Control Server version 3.0.
RADIUS operates in a client/server model in which secure authentication information is exchanged between the
RADIUS server and one or more RADIUS clients.
Figure 4-11-1
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User's Manual