3Com 2928 User Guide - Page 423

Table 1-1 Configuration task list for requesting a certificate manually Task Creating a PKI Entity Remarks Required Create a PKI entity and configure the identity information. A certificate is the binding of a public key and an entity, where an entity is the collection of the identity information of a user. A CA identifies a certificate applicant by entity. Creating a PKI Domain Generating an RSA Key Pair The identity settings of an entity must be compliant to the CA certificate issue policy. Otherwise, the certificate request may be rejected. Required Create a PKI domain, setting the certificate request mode to Manual. Before requesting a PKI certificate, an entity needs to be configured with some enrollment information, which is referred to as a PKI domain. A PKI domain is intended only for convenience of reference by other applications like SSL, and has only local significance. Required Generate a local RSA key pair. By default, no local RSA key pair exists. Generating an RSA key pair is an important step in certificate request. The key pair includes a public key and a private key. The private key is kept by the user, while the public key is transferred to the CA along with some other information. Retrieving the CA certificate If there is already a local certificate, you need to remove the certificate before generating a new key pair, so as to keep the consistency between the key pair and the local certificate. Required Certificate retrieval serves two purposes: z Locally store the certificates associated with the local security domain for improved query efficiency and reduced query count, z Prepare for certificate verification. If there are already CA certificates locally, you cannot perform the CA certificate retrieval operation. This is to avoid possible mismatch between certificates and registration information resulting from relevant changes. To retrieve the CA certificate, you need to remove the CA certificate and local certificate first. 1-4