Edge-Core ES4626 User Manual page 819

The supplicant system is an entity on one end of the lan segment, should be
authenticated by the access controlling unit on the other end of the link. A
Supplicant system usually is a user terminal device. Users starts 802.1x
authentication by starting supplicant system software. A supplicant system
should support EAPOL(Extensible Authentication Protocol over LAN).
The authenticator system is another entity on one end of the lan segment to
authenticate the supplicant systems connected. An authenticator system usually
is a network device supporting 802,1x protocol, providing ports to access the lan
for supplicant systems. The ports provided can either be physical or logical.
The authentication server system is an entity to provide authentication service
for authenticator systems. The authentication server system is used to
authenticate and authorize users, as well as do fee-counting, and usually is a
RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service ) server, which can store
the relative user information, including username, password and other
parameters such as the VLAN and ports which the user belongs to.
The three entities above concerns the following basic concepts: PAE of the port, the
controlled ports and the controlled direction.
1. PAE
PAE (Port Access Entity) is the entity to implement the operation of algorithms and
protocols.
The PAE of the supplicant system is supposed to respond the authentication
request from the authenticator systems and submit user's authentication
information to the authenticator system. It can also send authentication request
and off-line request to authenticator.
The PAE of the authenticator system authenticates the supplicant systems
Fig 23-1 The Authentication Structure of 802.1x
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