Short for
Extensible Authentication Protocol, an extension to
PPP. EAP is a general
protocol for
authentication that also supports multiple authentication methods, such as token cards,
Kerberos, one-time
passwords, certificates, public key authentication and
smart cards.
IEEE 802.1x specifies how EAP should be encapsulated in
LAN frames.
In wireless communications using EAP, a user requests connection to a WLAN through an AP, which then requests the identity of the user and transmits that identity to an authentication server such as RADIUS. The server asks the AP for proof of identity, which the AP gets from the user and then sends back to the server to complete the authentication.
EAP is defined by RFC 2284.
