Netgear FS728TPv2 FS728TP Software Administration Manual - Page 247

FS728TP Smart Switch Software Administration Manual 802.1X Local Area Networks (LANs) are often deployed in environments that permit unauthorized devices to be physically attached to the LAN infrastructure, or permit unauthorized users to attempt to access the LAN through equipment already attached. In such environments, it may be desirable to restrict access to the services offered by the LAN to those users and devices that are permitted to use those services. Port-based network access control makes use of the physical characteristics of LAN infrastructures in order to provide a means of authenticating and authorizing devices attached to a LAN port that has point-to-point connection characteristics and of preventing access to that port in cases in which the authentication and authorization process fails. In this context, a port is a single point of attachment to the LAN, such as ports of MAC bridges and associations between stations or access points in IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs. The IEEE 802.11 standard describes an architectural framework within which authentication and consequent actions take place. It also establishes the requirements for a protocol between the authenticator (the system that passes an authentication request to the authentication server) and the supplicant (the system that requests authentication), as well as between the authenticator and the authentication server. The FS728TP Smart Switch supports a guest VLAN, which allows unauthenticated users to have limited access to the network resources. Note: You can use QoS features to provide rate limiting on the guest VLAN to limit the network resources the guest VLAN provides. Another 802.1X feature is the ability to configure a port to Enable/Disable EAPoL packet forwarding support.You can disable or enable the forwarding of EAPoL when 802.1X is disabled on the device. The ports of an 802.1X authenticator switch provide the means in which it can offer services to other systems reachable via the LAN. Port-based network access control allows the operation of a switch's ports to be controlled in order to ensure that access to its services is only permitted by systems that are authorized to do so. Port access control provides a means of preventing unauthorized access by supplicants to the services offered by a system. Control over the access to a switch and the LAN to which it is connected can be desirable in order to restrict access to publicly accessible bridge ports or to restrict access to departmental LANs. Access control is achieved by enforcing authentication of supplicants that are attached to an authenticator's controlled ports. The result of the authentication process determines whether the supplicant is authorized to access services on that controlled port. Appendix B: Configuration Examples | 247